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'He Needs To Stay Behind Bars:' Nancy Grace On Why She Doesn't Want Teen Killer Scott Dyleski Out On Parole, Ever
Nancy Grace is close friends with murder victim Pamela Vitale's husband.
Nancy Grace made it clear that she doesn’t want a man, who killed her close friend’s wife when he was a teenager, to ever be released from prison.
The legal commentator and Oxygen contributor, whose new series, “Injustice With Nancy Grace,” premieres in July, said during her panel of the same name at CrimeCon 2019 that her show will examine the 2005 murder case of Pamela Vitale.
Vitale was found dead in 2005 inside a San Francisco East Bay mobile home she and her husband were living in temporarily as they were in the process of having their dream home made. The 52-year-old had been beaten with a chunk of crown molding, according to a 2005 CNN story. Not only that, but a double-crossed "T" had been carved into her body, according to a 2006 San Francisco Gate report.
Vitale was the wife of celebrity defense attorney Daniel Horowitz, who’s also good friends with Grace. He discovered her body and was very briefly eyed as the possible killer.
“One of my very closest friends became a suspect in the murder of his own wife,” Grace recalled on stage. “That case put me in such a moral dilemma about what I knew and what I thought I knew and what the evidence was telling me. It put me and him to the test in very different ways.”
However, another person was shortly arrested and convicted for the killing: Scott Dyleski, the couple’s 16-year-old neighbor. He was given 25 to life without parole but, thanks to a law that reduces life sentences for teens who were tried as adults, will actually become eligible for it in 2030, according to a 2018 East Bay Times report.
But Grace made it clear she wants the man responsible for killing her close friend’s wife locked up for life.
“If you could have seen the crime scene that I saw after Pam was murdered you would not want this guy out on parole,” she told Oxygen Digital Correspondent Stephanie Gomulka at CrimeCon, getting emotional. “You don’t want that.”
She firmly added, “He needs to stay behind bars.”
Dyleski has maintained his innocence, telling a judge in 2017, “I did not kill Pamela Vitale. There is no blood on my hands,” according to a 2017 East Bay Times report.
Vitale worked at Horowitz’ law firm at the time of her death, but before that was a high-tech marketing executive. Horowitz, meanwhile, represented several high-profile clients and at the time of his wife’s slaying was the lead defense in the Susan Polk murder case. Because of his own personal tragedy, Horowitz declared a mistrial in the Polk trial. She was convicted of killing her husband a year later.
In the years after his wife’s murder, Horowitz and Grace have not only remained friends but have made numerous television appearances together, sometimes verbally duking it out with each other, like in one 2014 clip from Nancy Grace’s former HLN show.
