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Death at trial & at home
Horowitz, defending killer, finds own wife slain in Calif.
by BILL HUTCHINSON
Daniel Horowitz goes into home where wife,
Pamela Vitale, was found dead Saturday.
Susan Polk: Killing of husband was self-defense.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/356538p-303897c.html

A famed criminal lawyer, currently defending a woman who brutally stabbed her wealthy
psychologist husband to death, found his wife slain this weekend in their sprawling
California home, police said yesterday.
"It's beyond words," Daniel Horowitz, a regular TV legal analyst on the sensational
Scott Peterson case, said after finding his wife's body Saturday night.
Cops said Horowitz, 50 - who has appeared as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC and Court
TV - made a desperate call to 911, saying, "My wife is dead."
No suspects were in custody last night, but detectives were exploring all angles,
including whether the death of Horowitz's wife, Pamela Vitale, 52, was connected to
the lawyer's current case - the defense of Susan Polk.
In the most riveting Bay Area case since Peterson went on trial for murdering his
wife, Polk is accused of killing her husband, prominent psychologist Felix Polk, 70,
who was also once her therapist.
"You don't know if it's because of hisjob, or this case he is handling now," lawyer
Anne Bremmer, a friend of Horowitz's, told CNN. "It's such a tragedy."
The Polk home is less than 5 miles from Horowitz's sprawling house in the ritzy San
Francisco suburb of Lafayette.
Police on Saturday raced to Horowitz's hilltop home, where Vitale was dead in the
doorway, the victim of a "violent homicide."
"We talked to a number of people lastnight, but there's nobody in custody," Contra
Costa County Sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee said yesterday, adding that 20 detectives
had been assigned to the case. "We're still trying to establish a motive."
Lee refused to reveal details of how Vitale was slain, saying an autopsy will be
performed today.
Horowitz was too distraught to comment, telling the San Francisco Chronicle, "I
can't. It's beyond words."
The feisty lawyer, who has also defended drug dealers and Death Row inmates, was
fearful for his safety, and had armed himself with a gun and had a surveillance
camera installed on his property, said friend Ivan Golde.
"It's only normal to have in the back of your mind, especially when you're dealing
with true-caliber criminals," said Golde, who is also a lawyer. "A lot of these
people, that's the way they are. They threaten people."
Cops also are delving into Horowitz's other high-profile cases, including his defense
of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko in a multicount money-laundering
and fraud trial.
In May, a judge threw out half of the convictions against Lazarenko.
Horowitz also represented Steve Williams, the man who snagged Barry Bonds' 700th home
run ball, in a lawsuit to determine who could keep the ball.
Golde said Horowitz and his wife were living in a trailer on their property as their
dream house was being built.
"They were perfect for each other, and it was a great marriage," Golde said. "We're
all just in total shock."
Latest twist in a twisted murder case
Even before the wife of Susan Polk's lawyer turned up dead, her murder case had all
the makings of a Hollywood drama, complete with sex, drugs and physical abuse against
the backdrop of one of thewealthiest communities in the nation.
Polk met her husband when she was 15, and he was her therapist. She became his lover
when she was 16, and his wife at the age of 25.
Prosecutors charge Susan Polk killed her husband in October 2002 - stabbing him 15
times in their pool house - in a cold, calculated plot to win his fortune.
But Polk says she killed him in self-defense, a bloody finale to years of abuse at
the hands of her Svengali-like husband.
"Susan Polk defended her life against a vengeful, aggressive man who was also her
husband," famed defense attorney Daniel Horowitz said in his opening argument when
the trial began Tuesday.
Horowitz vowed to prove to the jury that Felix Polk was a cocaine-using "monster" who
routinely hypnotized his wife and children to get them to obey his sinister orders.
Horowitz said Felix Polk even hypnotized his sons into beating their mother. "In the
cult of Felix ... those kids had an important role to keep their mother in line,"
Horowitz argued.
Polk claims her husband brainwashed his family into believing one of their sons was
molested as a baby by a satanic group.
Only one of Polk's three sons is expected to testify to back her story of abuse.
The other sons are seething at their mother for killing their father, including one
expected to be the prosecution's chief witness.
Gabriel Polk, 18, has told detectives his mother threatened his father repeatedly,
and that shortly after the murder she told him, "He's gone. Aren't you happy?"

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I intend to last long enough to put out of business all *****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.

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undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
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reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
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