Suspect's Mother Charged in Vitale Murder

By Stephen M. Silverman

Friday October 28, 2005 08:00 AM EDT

Daniel Horowitz and Pamela Vitale

Andrew Cohen/AP

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There's been a startling turn in the investigation into the killing of Pamela Vitale, wife of TV legal analyst Daniel Horowitz. On Thursday, police arrested the mother of the 16-year-old neighbor charged in Vitale's Oct. 15 murder and booked her on suspicion of being an accessory to the crime, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Scott Edgar Dyleski

Bob Larson / AP

On the same day her son, Scott Edgar Dyleski, was arraigned (as an adult) on a single count of murder, Esther Marion Fielding, 53, was arrested, booked and held in Contra Costa County Jail. She is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail, says the paper.

"Scott was the apple of her eye," former tenant Elena Dziadevitch, who once rented a room in Dyleski's and Fielding's home in Lafayette, Calif., tells the Chronicle. "She lived for him, and she would do anything for him. My impression of her is that she would have done anything for her son."

While no motive for the killing has been revealed, police believe Dyleski killed Vitale, 52, when he went to her home to retrieve marijuana-growing equipment he had ordered using stolen credit card information, the Chronicle reports.