“In a surprise move Thursday, Scott Dyleski’s 18-year-old girlfriend appeared in court to testify in the Pamela Vitale murder trial… She described both herself and Dyleski as sadomasochists and said they experimented with pain by hurting themselves. Reddy testified that Dyleski spoke of Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer known for removing his victims’ organs. Reddy said she had conversations with Dyleski about removing human organs, specifically the kidneys. Reddy said that it was ‘for the purposes of intellectual curiosity … to see how the human body would function without them.’ ‘This was absolutely chilling testimony today, seeing Scot Dyleski’s girlfriend in such a matter-of-factly fashion describe Scott’s obsession with torture and sex practices,’ attorney Steven Clark said. ‘Dyleski’s girlfriend just threw away the keys to his jail cell.’” — NBC (US)

You may recall that the gothed-up face of Mr. Dyleski appeared in newspapers a while ago when he was charged with bludgeoning to death the wife of a high-powered attorney. Prosecutors claim that the murder was “part of a plot to buy lighting equipment for growing marijuana indoors using stolen credit card information.” It’s a pretty complicated scenario and a pretty nasty crime just for buying some light fixtures, but that’s the hypothesis.

Evidently Mr. Dyleski’s defense lawyers were going to try to show what a good guy he was, but then his girlfriend decided to share some pillow talk about sadomasochism, vivisection, torturing children, Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden. According to a legal analyst — a dork who, if you watch the video, can’t even pronounce sadomasochism correctly — this testimony effectively throws Mr. Dyleski into prison. And yet, if you look closely at what the girl said, is it really so incriminating?

For starters, Ms. Reddy stated that she and Mr. Dyleski experimented with S&M. She does not detail exactly what these experiments involved. Did they tie each other up? Cut each other with razors? Bite each other? It’s not especially uncommon. Probably half the kids at a Marilyn Manson concert have experimented with some form of S&M. Why should such games indict Mr. Dyleski?

Second, Ms. Reddy mentions Mr. Dyleski’s interest in Jack the Ripper. Well, again, lots of kids are interested in Jack the Ripper. For those who hadn’t noticed, popular film star Johnny Depp made a movie about him not long ago. Is this so incriminating?

Third, Ms. Reddy mentions Mr. Dyleski’s “intellectual curiosity” about vivisection. Admittedly this is not the most common topic of conversation that you’ll find among today’s teens, but it’s not that weird. It might have been nothing more than that — just some weird talk.

Fourth, Ms. Reddy mentions that Mr. Dyleski, when hearing of police activity near the victim’s house, made a joke about Lizzie Borden. This could be slightly incriminating, since there’s a small analogy between the bludgeoning death of Pamela Vitale and Lizzie Borden’s famous “forty whacks.” But again, it’s not exactly character assassination. Lots of kids could have made the same joke.

It all makes you wonder about the common legal process whereby attorneys attempt to establish a general picture of a defendant’s character. Mr. Dyleski may well be a murderous creep, and these comments could hint at the corruption of his soul. He might also be an alienated teen whose blather was the same as that of a million other alienated teens — ones who happen to know better than to kill people for hare-brained pot schemes. At root, it’s difficult to say there is any real correlation between these comments and the crime. After all, look at it the other way — there are total creeps who walk on earth spouting pieties about God and Jesus. Nobody thinks these guys are good just because they happened to praise the lord before committing some murder. So why should the opposite be the case? Why should teen talk — and that’s all it is — make someone look more like a killer?

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