MARTINEZ, Calif. — After hearing four days of testimony, including DNA evidence that allegedly links teenager Scott Dyleski to the brutal bludgeoning death of the wife of a prominent California attorney, a judge ruled Friday that there was sufficient evidence to put the boy on trial for murder.

"It appears to me that the offense of murder has been committed," Judge Mary Ann O'Malley announced. "And there's sufficient cause to believe Scott Dyleski is guilty."

Prosecutors believe Dyleski murdered Pamela Vitale, 53, shortly after 10:15 a.m. on Oct. 15, 2005, during a violent struggle at her home in rural Lafayette, a woodsy neighborhood about 20 miles East of San Francisco.

Dyleski, 17, did not react to the ruling. For most of the past four days of testimony, the teen sat quietly at the defense table, engrossed in his writings on a legal pad, and only making eye contact with his public defender, Ellen Leonida.

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Leonida did not present evidence at the preliminary hearings and declined to comment to media, citing a gag order.

Vitale's husband, defense attorney Daniel Horowitz, came home shortly before 6 p.m. the day of his wife's murder and found her body in the entryway. A detective testified that a neighbor could hear his painful cries upon discovering Vitale's badly beaten body on the floor. The couple had been married for nearly 11 years.

Horowitz, who gained recognition for his insightful legal analysis for the media during the Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson trials, declined to comment on the judge's ruling Friday.

Destroyed evidence

Deputy District Attorney Harold Jewett called 22 witnesses, including detectives, friends of Dyleski, and the boy's own mother, Esther Fielding, who agreed to testify against her son when the District Attorney agreed to drop charges that she hid and destroyed evidence implicating him in the murder.

Fielding admitted that she burned her son's journal, handwritten notes and a box of sealed gloves in a fire two days after he was arrested.

Prosecutors concluded the hearings Friday with testimony from David Stockwell, a DNA expert who said Vitale's DNA was found on the boy's duffel bag, with a statistical probability that 1 in 13 quadrillion other Caucasians would share the same profile.

Detectives discovered the duffel, which was affixed with Dyleski's nametag, during a search of the property where the teen lived with 11 other individuals.

The bag contained bloody clothes that prosecutors believe Dyleski wore when he allegedly killed Vitale, and a mixture of both their DNA was found on a ski mask, shoes, and the bag itself.

A swab sample from Vitale's right foot, Stockwell said, also indicated a partial match to Dyleski's DNA, with a 1 in 43,000 probability of the profile being shared in the Caucasian population.

Trace DNA evidence from a third unidentified profile was also found on some of the items, but no further details were presented about the source.

Dyleski will be arraigned on March 3. Prosecutors say they will try him as an adult and he faces 26 years to life in prison. Because he was under 18 at the time of the crime, he avoids a possible death penalty sentence.

Evidence piles up

Dyleski lived in a home with two other families, 12 residents in all, down the road from Vitale and Horowitz, who were building their dream estate, a hilltop villa with a vineyard on some 12 acres of land. The couple was living in a trailer home on the construction site at the time of Vitale's murder.

Sheriff's department witnesses described what appeared to be a pitched struggle at the crime scene, with broken pottery, crushed boxes, displaced furniture, and blood stains and smears on the walls and doors.

A left-behind piece of broken crown moulding, one of the alleged weapons, had evidence of blood swipes and hair. The killer allegedly took a shower and had a glass of water, leaving blood behind on the fixtures, before exiting.

Investigators who examined Vitale's laptop said she had been doing Internet searches the morning of her death, checking on Web sites for family tree information and news about her husband's current case, the defense of accused murderer Susan Polk, when her Web surfing was stopped at exactly 10:12 a.m.

Vitale's fight against her attacker, according to a witness present at her autopsy, resulted in 30 lacerations to her face and scalp, dislodged upper front teeth, two broken fingers, a stab wound to her abdomen, and a superficial incision on her back — an H-shaped symbol with an extended crossbar, which resembled symbols detectives say they found in Dyleski's bedroom.

A member of Dyleski's household testified seeing "gaping wounds" on the boy's face between 10:20 to 11 a.m. as Dyleski walked in the house and explained that he scratched his face on a bush during a nature walk. Dyleski's mother, a reluctant witness for the prosecution, described his mark as "just a scratch."

A teenage friend of Dyleski's testified under immunity about the two of them concocting a plan to steal credit card information to buy hydroponics equipment online in order to grow their own marijuana plants.

The stolen credit card evidence, in at least one instance, linked Vitale's address back to Dyleski, a fact that his mother characterized on the stand as "an unfortunate coincidence."

But Dyleski's order was never shipped and prosecutors have theorized that the boy went to Vitale's home to resolve the problem. A sinister list with "to do" actions such as "Knock-out/kidnap" and "Cut up and bury" was found in the boy's bedroom dresser three months after his arrest.

Forensic examination of Dyleski's laptop also revealed the purchase of a knife four months before the murder, but prosecutors did not present evidence at the hearings definitively linking that knife to Vitale's stab wounds.

They did present, however, symbolic imagery and drawings found in the teen's room, including a thin figure in a trench coat, holding what appeared to be a bloody knife, and a series of sketches of symbols that allegedly resembled the symbol carved into Vitale's back.

"This is his imagination," Dyleski's attorney Leonida argued. "Not Mr. Dyleski's, but Mr. Jewett's. I think it's a really far reach to say this is evidence of a homicidal obsession."

Prosecutor Jewett characterized Dyleski's drawings as "disturbing images surrounding murder."

"Artwork," Jewett argued, "is a reflection of the mind of the artist."