Byron DeCles to stand trial after stabbing at his Berkeley home

A man who was accused last year of trying to kill two relatives, including Berkeley author Diana Paxson, has been ordered to stand trial.

But after hearing some evidence in the case, an Alameda County Superior Court judge reduced and dismissed several of the charges against Byron DeCles.

DeCles, now 22, still faces one count of attempted murder relating to his adopted brother, Ian Grey, who was 55 at the time of the December attack.

But the evidence presented did not support the claim that DeCles tried to kill his 80-year-old grandmother, the judge said, reducing that charge to felonious assault with a deadly weapon.

“There is no particular reason to believe that Mr. DeCles had any animosity toward [her] other than that, she was apparently in his way while he was trying to reach Mr. Grey,” Judge Thomas Reardon said during the preliminary hearing. “That appeared to be what was happening.”

Paxson, née Studebaker, did not testify during the brief hearing, according to a transcript that recently became available. The Scanner reviewed the transcript to write this story.

The only people who spoke at the May 28 hearing were Ian Gray and Nancy Giese, the other victims named in the case.

During a preliminary hearing, the judge reviews certain evidence in the case to determine whether the prosecution has met the requirements necessary to proceed to trial.

But the bar is low: The prosecution must simply prove that the alleged crimes appear to have occurred and that the defendant could be responsible for them.

Ian Gray gave evidence first and described how he made spaghetti on Friday, December 8, 2023, because Fridays were “our usual spaghetti night.”

He told the court that DeCles was the adopted son of Grey's adopted brother and said he had previously had to kick DeCles out of the home, nicknamed Greyhaven, due to increasingly violent behavior.

The house, a well-known literary house in Berkeley, is located on El Camino Real near The Uplands.

Around 6:30 p.m., Gray and his mother, Diana, “heard a loud noise” coming from the front of the house.

As the two men walked from the kitchen toward the hallway, they “collided” with DeCles at the foot of the stairs, he said.

“He had gotten mixed up with her and as I came out, he looked me in the eye,” Gray testified. “And he just started swinging his right arm with a knife.”

Learn more about crime in Berkeley.

Gray said DeCles didn't say anything but appeared to be “trying to get through” his grandmother to get to Grey.

Gray saw the “wild slashes” of DeCles’ knife strike Diana, he testified.

He managed to push his mother away, then raised his arm, trying in vain to block the knife.

“I felt the blade go into the back of my neck and scalp several times,” Gray said. “I thought I was stabbed in the head.”

It turned out he had been stabbed in the ear as well as the back of his neck and head, he said, in addition to suffering other cut injuries.

Nancy Giese, 72, testified that she was on her computer that night when she heard “bangs and bangs and screams” and ran downstairs.

“I heard a voice say, 'Byron is attacking Ian and he has a knife,'” she said. “I felt like I had to do something to intervene.”

She grabbed a fragile ornament that was hanging in the foyer and hit DeCles from behind in the shoulder with it, she said.

Then DeCles passed her and ran up the stairs toward the front door, she said.

Ian Gray said DeCles did not leave immediately. Instead, he grabbed a large piece of wood and threw it at Grey, dislocating his shoulder, he said.

The house used the board to reinforce the door at night because of security concerns regarding DeCles, who had been captured on Greyhaven security cameras, he said.

After throwing the wooden board, DeCles ran away, Gray said.

“I don’t remember him saying anything during the incident,” he told the court.

Ian Gray was hospitalized for about two days, he said. His mother was released before him.

Initially, he asked first responders to focus on her injuries, in part because she appeared to be losing a significant amount of blood.

Police later determined that Grey's injuries were actually more serious.

Gray also testified that although Byron DeCles had lived for a time in Greyhaven, he was kicked out because “he kept taking my mother's car without permission.”

DeCles had also attacked Gray in July last year, Gray said, hitting him in the back of the head.

“He had made his hostility toward Ian known over the past few months,” Nancy Giese said of DeCles.

In another incident, in October, DeCles showed up in Greyhaven and randomly attacked “a friend of the house,” causing him head injuries, according to court testimony.

“It seemed like he didn't know why he was attacked,” Giese said of the victim in that incident. “He looked stunned.”

She described calling the police for help that day and how she and her daughter held a towel over the man's bloodied head while waiting for paramedics to arrive.

He ultimately needed eight staples and was left with a bruised eye, according to court documents.

But prosecutor Kevin Asvitt presented no details of those injuries during the preliminary hearing.

He also didn't present many details about Diana Paxson's injuries.

During brief closing arguments, public defender Russell Mangan argued that a number of charges against his client should be reduced or even dropped.

“While there may be an intent to cause injury,” Mangan told the judge, “there is not enough evidence that he was trying to kill anyone.”

He also argued that there was “no evidence” that anyone intentionally pushed Giese and that the testimony on Count 4, the October attack, pointed to misdemeanor at best.

Prosecutor Asvitt said only that he believed both stabbings should be charged with attempted murder, in part because both victims had been stabbed in the head and neck.

“I think [it] shows an intent not only to harm someone but to kill,” he said.

Judge Reardon said Ian Grey's injuries as well as testimony about previous conflicts between the men appeared to meet the standards of attempted murder.

But he said he didn't think the prosecution had met the bar when it came to Diana (Paxson) Studebaker. He reduced that count to felonious assault with a deadly weapon.

The judge also dismissed the elder abuse charge linked to Giese, noting that the contact – as described in court testimony – had appeared accidental.

DeCles still faces a burglary charge stemming from the Dec. 8 break-in as well as misdemeanor battery charges in connection with the attack on Ian Gray in July (which was reduced to a preliminary felony ) and the October attack.

Before the preliminary hearing, the case was put on hold for about five months for a mental health evaluation of DeCles, according to court records.

He was later found competent and the criminal proceedings suddenly resumed in May.

According to court records, DeCles faces separate misdemeanor battery charges related to a domestic violence report in June of last year in which he punched his pregnant girlfriend in the head while they were together at the hospital.

The two had been dating for five years at the time, police wrote last year, and have a child together.

As of this week, DeCles remains in custody at the Santa Rita Jail on bail of approximately $500,000, according to booking records.

He is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on July 9.