by emad » Tue Oct 18, 2005 11:40 am
Top lawyer discovers wife stabbed to death at dream home<br>From Chris Ayres in Los Angeles<br> <br> <br>THE wife of a prominent California lawyer who has defended drug dealers, killers and other serious criminals was murdered at the weekend in a case that has sent a shiver through the American legal profession. <br><br>Daniel Horowitz, 50, found the body of his wife, Pamela Vitale, at the entrance of their home on Saturday. <br><br> <br> <br>The couple were living in a mobile trailer while they were building their “dream estate” near San Francisco, according to authorities. <br><br>A post-mortem examination was being performed yesterday in an attempt to find out how Mrs Vitale died. <br><br>Mr Horowitz is currently defending Susan Polk, who is accused of murdering her therapist husband in 2002. Felix Polk was found stabbed to death in the pool house of the couple’s home in Orinda, California. She says that she killed him in self-defence. <br><br>Mr Horowitz became well known in the US as a defence pundit on television channels including CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, during the murder trial of Scott Peterson, a Californian fertiliser salesman who was found guilty of killing his pregnant wife. <br><br>He also defended Pavlo Lazarenko, the former Ukrainian Prime Minister, in a recent money-laundering and fraud trial. In May a judge threw out half of the convictions against Mr Lazarenko, who is still under house arrest at an undisclosed location in the San Francisco area. <br><br>Other clients of Mr Horowitz have included Steve Williams, the man who caught the baseball hit by the sports star Barry Bonds on his 700th home run, in a lawsuit to determine who could keep the ball. A judge allowed Mr Williams to auction the ball. <br><br>Friends of Mr Horowitz said that he was mindful of his safety and carried a gun. There was a surveillance camera at his trailer, but the property was too isolated to fully monitor. <br><br>“This is a real tragedy. These are good people,” said Ivan Golde, a friend of Mr Horowitz and co-counsel in the Susan Polk case. He added that his colleague was always aware that he was a target, even if he didn’t know about specific threats. <br><br>“It’s only normal to have in the back of your mind, especially when you’re dealing with true-calibre criminals,” said Mr Golde. “With a lot of these people, that’s the way they are, they threaten people.” <br><br>After the murder, a police officer was stationed at the bottom of Mr Horowitz’s driveway. Trees blocked views of the property, which is about 20 miles east of San Francisco. <br><br>Mr Horowitz first called the police on Saturday night to report that his wife was dead, said a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. The lawyer returned to his property briefly on Sunday. <br><br>Another friend of Mr Horowitz’s, Robert Massi, told the NBC Today programme that the lawyer had an alibi for most of Saturday. “He was with me for a couple of hours and met with his defence team about 11am on the Susan Polk case,” Mr Massi said. <br><br>“In the afternoon he dropped paperwork off at the hotel where I was staying. Everything was fine. It’s just devastating to think that nine hours later the man finds his wife like this.” <br><br>Mr Horowitz married Mrs Vitale about ten years ago. Both had been previously married. Mrs Vitale, 52, a former high-tech marketing executive, worked at her husband’s law practice, managing databases. She sat in the front row of the courtroom last week during her husband’s opening statement. <br><br>“She was down to earth and believed in what Dan was doing,” Mr Golde said. <br> <br> <br> <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1830396,00.html">www.timesonline.co.uk/art...96,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <p></p><i></i>
