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Chapter 1: What happened in Lafayette, California that shocked the community?
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay and choo-choo! Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely insane edition of Small Town Murder Express. And this one, oh boy, it fits the... It fits the bill perfectly. It's nuts. It's wild.
Ten pounds of murder in a two pound bag. We'll get into all that and more very quickly, though. Top of the show here. Shut up and give me murder dot com. Oh, yeah. Go get all your tickets there. First of all, tons of new merch there, too. So check that out. But tickets, tickets, tickets. September the 18th. Pabst Theater, Milwaukee. Not a lot of tickets left for that.
Chapter 2: Who was Daniel Horowitz and what role did he play in the case?
So if you want to go to that show. No, no. Go ahead and get your tickets now. Then the next night, State Theater in Minneapolis. Get your tickets for that September 19th. Get those now. Milwaukee's currently beating you, Minneapolis. Fascinating. I know you don't care for that. I know you don't want Wisconsin to beat you at anything. So let's up the game there.
And then we have Dallas on October 3rd. And then later on in October, San Jose, Sacramento. And then November, Tarrytown, Boston. So that's shutupandgivememurder.com. where you get all that stuff and more. Also, listen to our other two shows, Crime and Sports. We have a long series going on about the Yahweh Ben Yahweh cult and all their many, many murders. And that's crazy.
And then your stupid opinions. Come on. You got to hear that. You got to hear. It's so funny. It's just hilarious. Then get yourself Patreon, everybody. Here we go. Do a favor for yourself. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all the bonus material. All you have to be is $5 a month or above, and you get every damn second of it. Every ounce. Every second. Every ounce. Yeah.
We like to measure our output in weight is how we like to do it. Volume. Volume. Pure volume. So do we do water displacement tests really to make it perfect? Yeah. So patreon.com slash crime in sports. Five dollars a month or above. You get everything we put out, including as soon as you subscribe, hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before. New ones every other week.
One crime in sports, one small town murder. And you get them all, baby. May as well. As well, this week what you get here is for crime and sports, we're going to do hostage situations part two because the first one was just so damn fun. We were like, okay, we need more. And we had another show's worth on our notes. So we said, let's do that.
Then for small town murder, it's prisoner dating game time, everybody. Need we say more? It's prisoner dating game time. You know you want to sign up for that. Four bachelorettes, four bachelors. I line them up for Jimmy. The only thing they have in common is they're all incarcerated violent felons. For a very long time.
He gets to pick it based on just what they say about themselves, and then he gets to find out what they did afterwards and if he made a terrible choice.
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Chapter 3: What were the circumstances surrounding Pamela Vitale's murder?
So it's a crazy, crazy show and good times. Patreon.com slash crimeinsports.com. Get every pound that we put out right there. You bet. Right there. And also, you get a shout-out at the end of the regular show, and you get all the shows we put out, Crime and Sports, Your Stupid Opinion, Small Town Murder, all ad-free. Ad-free. Can't beat it. That said, I think it's time, everybody. Let's do this.
Let's all sit back, clear the lungs here. What do you say? Arms to the sky. Let's all shout.
Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.
Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do it. Yeah. Going to California this week.
Lovely.
California. Northern California. Love Northern California. Yeah. That's my favorite up there in the Bay Area, like Carmel and all that. It's real nice. This is Lafayette, California. Sure.
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Chapter 4: How did the police begin their investigation into Pamela's death?
Well, the Bay Area north and west. You don't want to go northeast. Northeast.
No, no, then you end up in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, North Coast, fine.
In the middle of nowhere, yeah. Let's stay close to the water is what I'm saying, yeah. Don't get too inland. You don't want to do that. So Northern California, where we will be, by the way, in October on the 16th and 17th in San Jose and Sacramento. So get your tickets for that at shutupandgivememurder.com. But Northern California.
It's about 35 minutes to San Francisco, about three hours and 15 minutes over to Reno, and four hours to Springville, California, our last episode there, which was episode 667, The Most Interesting Murderer in the World. That was a wild one, man. That guy was nuts. This is in Contra Costa County, which is very hard. It's very Contra Costa County. Area code 925, population here only 25,384.
So it's small to be outside of the major cities that close to it, 35 minutes, mainly because it's expensive as we'll get into here. Of course it is. Wow. Median household income here, $97,000. $946,000, which is about $30,000 above the national average, but nowhere near what you'd need to deal with this house cost here. This is insane. Median home cost here, $1,767,400. Median.
That's the median home. One and three quarters. Holy crap.
Fucking balls. Wow. Now, a little bit of history. The country is about a million three short of that.
Yeah, no shit. Wow. So, history, it was named after the Marquis de Lafayette, who was a French military officer of the American Revolutionary War, because they were on our side, because they've been hating Britain since the beginning of time. So, the name Lafayette came together with the community's first post office in 1857,
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Chapter 5: What evidence pointed to Scott Dileski as a suspect?
They went back and forth with the spelling. In 1857, it was Lafayette, but one word, but with a capital F. Then in 1864, it was Lafayette, one word, lowercase f. Then a little bit later, by 1890, it was Lafayette officially changed. Oh, I'm sorry. Before that, they made it two words, Lafayette. Then they changed it back to Lafayette. Then by 1905, it was back to two words again.
Good Lord.
And then finally in 1932, the post office was officially changed to one word, Lafayette, lowercase f, and that's what it's remained for the last 100 years or so. So reviews of this town. It has 4.2 stars on niche, which is not bad. That's pretty good. There's nothing under three stars. It's all three, four, or five.
It's all wealthy people that are happy.
Yeah, what are you complaining about? My neighbor's house is bigger than mine.
My house would cost me a little bit more than I wanted to pay.
Yeah, other than that.
With that comes some benefits.
Yeah, here's five stars. Lafayette is very good. I like every part of it. I love the schools and lifestyle of everything. Everything is great. No, we've never had that in a review before. It's very Legos. Yeah, everything is wonderful. Everything is awesome. When you have $1.8 million houses, I guess you go, everything is great. We can all afford to live in fucking $1.8 million houses.
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Chapter 6: What were the key findings from the autopsy of Pamela Vitale?
Parents tend to be too competitive and hard on their children. Yeah, it's rich people.
A lot of sailing clubs.
Yeah. This person's like slums of Beverly Hills over here. Right. Just on the border of the school district to go to a good school, and they know that he's not one of them. That's what it is. Things to do here. Okay. The Lafayette Wine and Arts Festival. Sure. And over in last year, 2025, over 75,000 people were there. Fuck. Over the course of the few days that it goes on.
Everybody's fascinated with how rich people live. Yeah. We all want to see it.
And this is like local food and micro brews and wine and all that kind of shit. That sounds like a fun day.
That's why we put up with Robin Leach's horrible accent.
Yeah.
Just to see how fucking Oprah grills steaks.
Yeah.
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Chapter 7: How did Scott's personal background influence the investigation?
Charged Particles. Okay. Ions, basically. Yeah. Freestone Peaches, The Big Jangle. Yeah. Okay. Maybe my favorite name of all time, Lonesome Eddie and the Saddlesores.
Oh, I haven't. Saddle sores?
Sores. S-O-R-E-S. He's got saddle sores. Poor Eddie and his fucking blistered ass. Oh, poor Eddie. You poor bastard. So that said, let's talk about some murder here. What do you say? Here we go. Okay. We got a wild case here. Let's start out. In 1994, and then we'll work our way up because the whole murder thing happens a little bit later, 2005-ish.
So let's start out with a man, an East Bay lawyer. Daniel Horowitz is his name, okay? East Bay criminal defense attorney. Nice. And always on TV as a talking head legal analyst. He's one of those guys.
He's talking about the case and defending the person that's on trial, or giving an analysis.
Analysis, yeah. If Nancy Grace is talking about Casey Anthony, he'll come on and talk about the legalities of it and how you defend it and that kind of shit.
And talk about how sometimes if you hit a raccoon, it makes your trunk stink. That's right.
So dumb. Henry Hill. I hit a raccoon, Karen, all right? I hit a skunk, Karen, all right? So it's not a raccoon, but he could have made it a raccoon. So he defended murderers, drug dealers, you know, criminal defense attorney.
Isn't that what she said she hit with that fucking sunfire?
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of Scott Dileski's trial and what were the implications?
That's so much house. 7,000 square foot house overlooking a canyon in Lafayette. They're doing great. And it's like an exclusive area of Lafayette. Like they are killing it money-wise. In the fall of 2005 here, though, they were, I guess for a little while, they were living in a trailer on the property while it was being built. Right. They were living as like a manufactured home.
and it was parked right there at the property. This is on Hunsaker Canyon Road, and it's big trees and rocks, and it's beautiful. By fall of 2005, Daniel has a high-profile trial, a woman named Susan Polk. Have you ever heard of her? P-O-L-K? No. She was in Orinda, California. She was a housewife accused of stabbing her psychotherapist husband to death in 2002. Wow. Holy.
Yeah, which is interesting.
I can't imagine that relationship goes very easily either.
Well, the guy deserves something. I'm not saying he deserves to be stabbed, but they met when she was 14 years old and was sent to him as a patient because she had panic attacks.
I don't like that at all.
A, 14, even if they met in any other circumstance, not okay. And B, a therapist should never go out with their patient ever, even 20 years later. You don't do that. It's not ethical at all. That feels very grooming. Yeah. A therapist. That's the most grooming relationship of all time. Totally. Especially since she was so young. She's 14 and completely under his care. You know what I mean?
She's going to stab you later for this. You have to trust a therapist, you know?
Yeah. Wow. And also, if she is like lashed out in a fit of psychosis, he should have known. I don't know. That's your job, man.
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