Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [104]
Horowitz told investigators that he left Oakland shortly thereafter. Later he made a deposit at the bank, and grabbed a Starbuck’s coffee in town before heading to the gym. After his workout, he headed for home, where he found his wife murdered.
Though short and slender, Horowitz had a wiry strength. While he stood barely 58, with thinning brown hair and rimless eyeglasses perched atop a prominent nose, he had honed the physique of a person who worked out seriously at the gym. Like many defense lawyers, Horowitz had received his share of threats over the years. Staying in top physical shape gave him a sense of security. He informed police he was licensed to carry a gun.
An initial investigation by members of the Contra Costa crime lab determined that Pamela Vitale was savagely beaten with “multiple objects” during the attack that claimed her life. Evidence collected at the crime scene indicated that she was hit numerous times with several different weapons, although police declined to reveal further details of the brutal assault other than to say that Pamela’s death was “violent.”
A coroner’s report would later reveal that the fifty-two-year-old was found facedown on the carpet. She was struck more than two dozen times in the head, some of the blows so powerful they dislodged her front teeth and exposed sections of her skull. She had also been stabbed in the abdomen while she lay dead in a pool of blood.
News of the horrific killing quickly drew national media attention to Susan Polk, as speculation swirled that Vitale’s death might somehow be linked to the Polk case. It seemed an eerie coincidence that both Felix Polk and Pamela Vitale had been brutally stabbed, although initial media reports stated only that Vitale had been bludgeoned to death. It was not long after Pamela’s body was discovered that police began looking into the possibility the cases were linked.
Among those interviewed by investigators was Susan’s middle son, Eli Polk, his younger brother, Gabriel, and lawyer Barry Morris. Investigators also questioned a number of the construction workers employed by Horowitz, as well as a neighbor, Joseph William Lynch, who had recently sold the couple four acres in Hunsaker Canyon.
A subsequent investigation revealed that Vitale and her husband had filed a restraining order against Lynch in Contra Costa Superior Court in June 2005. In the complaint, they charged that Lynch was mentally ill and a methamphetamine and alcohol user who routinely harassed them and other neighbors in the Lafayette area. Police were surprised to learn that the couple later elected not to serve Lynch with the court order after hearing that he had signed up for a drug rehabilitation program and was trying to clean up his act.
Lynch denied any involvement in the murder, claiming that Pamela and Horowitz were good people who had supported his efforts to get sober. “Dan was trying to help me,” Lynch told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I have a drug problem, an alcohol problem, and a big mouth. I’m clean and sober now. Dan and Pamela were really trying to help me.”
There was also mention of a former boyfriend of Pamela’s who had been trying to get back together with her in recent months, but Horowitz expressed doubt about the man’s involvement in his wife’s death. “I just think he knows what he missed out on,” the lawyer told a reporter for a local newspaper. “But to think of him as a suspect would be a grave injustice.”
On Monday, October 17, Dan Horowitz was at home making funeral arrangements when Judge Laurel Brady, at the request of Susan’s other attorney, Ivan Golde, dismissed the Polk jury and declared a mistrial in the case. Brady cited extensive media coverage of Pamela Vitale’s murder as