Date With the Devil (27 page)

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Authors: Don Lasseter

BOOK: Date With the Devil
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“Had you ever met her prior to that date?”
“Yes, three or four times.”
“Did the defendant come into that room?”
“After Kristi and I had a brief conversation, he came in. He was really very angry about something and asked me if I would go back down to my apartment for a while, because he had something to talk about with her.”
Bobby Grace leaned over the prosecutor's table, checking some notes before proceeding. He wanted to be certain not to omit anything essential. Donnie's stories, as told during the interview with Detectives Bynum and Small, and in the preliminary hearing, seemed to vary somewhat. Grace needed to elicit from him the clearest possible narrative about crucial events leading up to the shooting of Kristin Baldwin. He asked, “Did the defendant tell you what he was angry about?”
Still agitated and constantly shifting his weight in the chair, Van Develde replied, “I didn't really ... couldn't make out too much of the conversation. I just know he was very upset, and something had happened, and I guess that upset him and he wanted to—needed to—discuss it with her.”
“How was he dressed at the time?”
“He was wearing regular street clothes.” Donnie told of leaving the room, descending to his apartment, and waiting for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. “He called me again and said he was through talking to her and for me to come back up there.”
Van Develde said that he ascended the lengthy exterior stairs, and was buzzed in.
“When you arrived, what was David wearing?”
“He had a white bathrobe on. It wasn't tied or anything, and was open, and he didn't have anything else on.”
“Where was Kristi at that point?”
“She was sitting on the floor, Indian style, right in front of the fireplace.” Asked what she was doing, Donnie said, “She was going through her bags and looked like she was crying.”
“Can you tell us about the defendant's behavior?”
“He was walking around, with his bathrobe open, talking a bunch of gibberish and ranting nonsense. It seemed like he was out of his mind... .”
Defender Larry Young could be seen rapidly entering notes on lined yellow paper.
“... He was like hot and cold. One minute he was joking and being friendly, and then in another minute, he was upset and it just ... it was very weird.”
Bobby Grace asked if Donnie had noticed Mahler drinking. The witness turned vague about this, said he wasn't certain, but David might have been consuming some wine.
“You said he was ranting. Could you be more specific about what he said?”
“I couldn't tell what he was really angry about. I don't think ... It seemed to me that he didn't know what he was angry about. He would just get fired up, and then chill out, and then get hot again.”
“Did you see a gun?”
Speaking even more rapidly, Van Develde told of seeing Mahler disappear into a closet and return with a revolver in his hand. The witness said he had seen it a couple of weeks earlier when Mahler had shown it to him.
Asked what happened next, Donnie said Mahler had pointed it at Kristi and pulled the trigger. It clicked, and Mahler did it again.
Now perspiring and twisting with even more animation, Donnie told of being rattled by Mahler's display of the handgun and pointing it at Kristi's face. “One time he kind of ran up at her and, as I said, he was like—like hot and cold. He was going at her and yelling at her, and then backing off and laying down on the bed. And then going back, and when he had the gun, one time he ran toward her and, like, almost up to her.”
Mahler, he said, somehow came up with a single bullet, loaded it into the cylinder, and pulled the trigger again. “I didn't actually see him go to any specific place to get the bullet. Just one minute, there was no bullet, and the next minute, he had one.”
“Then what happened?”
“He was arguing a bunch of gibberish again, running hot and cold. He would argue with her, and then he set the gun down on the bed. That's when I went to pick it up, because I wanted to see if I could throw it or hide it or something like that. And he grabbed my hand and stopped me from getting it. He picked it up again and was just holding it.” Donnie waved his hand around in circles and thrust it forward, as if demonstrating Mahler's threatening gestures with the weapon.
Grace said, “You are making motions. For the record, is that how he was waving the gun around?”
“Yes, and he was talking, like spurting out comments and more—more of whatever he was upset about toward Kristi and things about life in general or whatever. I couldn't tell you exactly.”
In his previous reports to the police, and at the preliminary hearing, Donnie Van Develde had said that Mahler also pointed the loaded weapon at him and clicked it. But to several questions from Bobby Grace about that, Donnie's memory failed him.
To be certain the jury knew of the previous version, Grace asked Van Develde if he remembered testifying at the preliminary hearing that Mahler had pointed the gun at his face. Donnie said he might have misunderstood the question at the prelim. Trying once more, the prosecutor asked, “Did he click it at you?”
Donnie couldn't recall. However, the nervous witness did add a new element. “He seemed to settle down and chill out for a while.”
“What made you think he was chilled out?”
“He made some comment, something to the effect of some sort of sexual thing that he was ... he had in mind.”
“For Kristi?” Yes. “Do you remember what the comment was?”
Donnie, seemingly embarrassed, muttered, “Something to the effect of a threesome.”
“What did you do?”
“I said no. No, thank you. I am a married man and I wasn't interested in that.” Afterward, said Donnie, he decided to leave. “I had enough of the whole situation.”
“Were you scared?”
“No, not really. I had just had enough.”
“And what happened when you left?”
“As I went to shut the door, I heard the gun shoot. I heard the bang of a gun firing.”
Jurors and spectators alike sat frozen in their chairs or on the bench, gripped by the dramatic climax, as if they had all heard the deadly explosion. No movie plot could equal the impact of this real-life pivotal moment.
“What did you do?”
“I kept going and went to my apartment.”
Another memory issue came up when Grace asked Van Develde, “Do you remember telling detectives that Mahler said to you, ‘I am so pissed off I could kill someone'?”
Hesitating and glancing around with apparent fear, the witness replied that Mahler may have said something to that effect, but he couldn't be positive.
According to Donnie, he had left the bedroom after hearing what sounded like a gunshot, returned to his room, and tried to think of what he should do next. Mahler, he said, tried to call him five or six times, but Donnie refused to answer. “I didn't feel like dealing with it anymore.” Eventually, though, he changed his mind and accepted the call. Mahler had started talking about Kristi coming at him with a knife, so he had been forced to protect himself. Also, Mahler said he had left the house and was with a buddy who would help him.
Grace attacked the theory of self-defense by asking Donnie if he had seen any sign of a knife in the room, or in the possession of Kristin. He answered in the negative.
Through more interrogation, Donnie told of going back upstairs about forty-five minutes later. Mahler was nowhere to be seen. By climbing through a garage window, he gained entry and also noticed that one of the Jaguars was missing. Donnie went to the master bedroom door, looked inside, and saw a bedspread on the floor with Kristin's hand, palm up, extending from underneath. Only then did he believe that Mahler had actually shot her. “Then I hightailed it out of there and went downstairs to my apartment and started kind of freaking out a bit.”
With an admission of not calling the police, Van Develde explained, “Partly because he was my friend, and because I would be afraid, you know, of him doing something. If he shot her, he might shoot me or my wife.”
 
 
On his cross-examination, Larry Young worked to place the emphasis on David Mahler's angry, erratic, illogical behavior. In several forms of the question, he asked what David was like that morning. Donnie Van Develde provided exactly the answer the defender sought. “He was out of his mind.”
Through his questions, Young stressed the “hot and cold” conduct Donnie had repeatedly mentioned. Observers understood the direct implications of bipolar disorder. Young also inquired about Mahler's drug and alcohol usage, as witnessed by Van Develde.
During a whispered sidebar conference between the judge and the lawyers, Donnie could be seen risking a glance at the defendant. The two men locked eyes for a few moments, and it seemed to generate a charge of electricity in the room.
The cross-examination by Young, brief redirect questions from Bobby, and a final recross by Young consumed the remainder of the day. Young said he still needed to ask the witness a few more questions. Donnie Van Develde slumped when ordered by the judge to make himself available for more testimony on the next day.
Judge Wesley advised jurors not to discuss the case with anyone and to avoid television or newspaper accounts of the trial, ordered them to return at nine the next morning, and bid them a good evening.
 
 
Later discussing the trial testimony of witness Donnie Van Develde, Bobby Grace expressed disappointment, especially with the alleged loss of memory about David Mahler pointing the gun at him. Grace recalled, “Probably about ten or fifteen percent of what he said on the stand was usable. On any given day, Donnie would tell you a different version of how this all happened, and, more critically, he would change his story about what happened when Mahler produced that gun—when he first showed it, when he put the bullet in and pointed it at both Donnie and the victim. I think we got enough out of him that the jury understood. For example, only one shot. Also, it made sense to me, in one of Donnie's versions, that the reason he left the bedroom was because Mahler had at least once pointed the gun toward him.”
C
HAPTER
32
“I
N
T
HIS
I
NDUSTRY
, N
OTHING
I
S
S
URPRISING
”
Friday dawned with a thick haze of smoke hovering over the entire Los Angeles Basin. The largest fire in the county's history had been started, probably by an arsonist, two days earlier in foothills above the La Cañada Flintridge community, about ten miles north of the courthouse. Voracious flames rapidly climbed into mountains of the Angeles National Forest and grew into a major conflagration. It would destroy more than two hundred homes, blacken over 250 square miles, and kill two firefighters. Countless wild animals lost their lives. A metal forest of television towers atop Mt. Wilson would also be in serious danger. Fire departments from dozens of cities would take six weeks to completely extinguish the blaze, at a cost to taxpayers approaching $100 million.
Jurors, lawyers, and court watchers filing into the courthouse buzzed endlessly about the dangers and the tragic losses. Flames and smoke could be seen from vantage points on the ninth floor.
Prospective witnesses who seated themselves on benches outside the entry to Judge Wesley's courtroom included Donnie Van Develde and Karl Norvik. Because witnesses who had traveled a long distance took priority, neither of the two men would be called on this day. They would be required to show up again on the following Tuesday, since no session was scheduled for Monday.
The judge seated himself shortly after nine o'clock, scanned the jury box to make certain all were present, and, without wasting a moment, told Bobby Grace to call his next witness. The prosecutor summoned Marie Means Dionne, Kristin's mother. A picture of her on the large screen appeared for a few minutes before being replaced by a smiling photo of her daughter. In Marie's mind, Kristin might have been wishing her a happy birthday, which would come on Saturday.
Marie's experience as a witness lasted only three minutes. Grace first asked her to identify the projected photo of Kristin, and then confirmed that a sample swab had been taken from Marie's mouth for DNA analysis. It had been used to establish a link between the victim and bloodstains found inside the Cole Crest house.
Larry Young wisely and compassionately chose not to cross-examine.
 
 
Detective Christopher Fisher, from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office, came next. A stoutly built man, with dark hair trimmed into a flat top and downward-sloping shoulders of an athlete, Fisher spoke in a deep, slightly hoarse voice.
With a photo displayed on the screen of the desert site where Kristin's body had been discovered, the detective, now a sergeant, told of responding to the scene on June 16, 2007. Pointing to projected maps and photos, he verified the setting. Upon arrival at the crime scene, Fisher said, he saw the pickup truck stuck in sand, but he didn't meet the owner or the two men who had tried to help her. Bobby Grace asked, “From the street level, was it possible to see the body ... below the bridge?”
“No. You actually had to walk to the edge of the dirt shoulder and look down into the wash area to see the body.”
Signaling the PowerPoint operator to change the projected photo, Grace waited until a ghastly picture of Kristin's remains appeared in full color for everyone in the room to see. In the gallery, Robin Henson clasped her hands over her face and bowed, looking toward her knees. Her body shook with sobs.
The prosecutor said, “Showing you what has been marked as People's [Exhibit] sixty-one, Sergeant, does it show a closer view of the victim's body?” Fisher said it did. He briefly described the search for evidence.
 
 
In cross-examination Larry Young referred to an aerial photo of the scene. Judge Wesley offered him the use of his laser pointer to make it easier for everyone to understand. Young accepted it. He asked the witness if it would be possible for someone to drive a vehicle in the wash where the remains lay. Sergeant Fisher said it would probably require a four-wheel drive to do so. “Even then, I think it would be very difficult.”
Pointing out that the body appeared to be partially under the bridge, Young asked if the detective had any theories about how it got there. Christopher Fisher replied, “My two theories would be that somebody stood at the edge of the roadway and dropped the body straight down. Or someone took the body down to that area.”
“Assuming that someone may have taken the body down, did you take any soil samples from around the body? Not where the decomposition is, but the rock and gravel and the type of dirt it is? And did you take any samples of the plant material from around there?”
“We took none of those things.”
“Well, shouldn't that have been done in case someone had, in fact, taken that body down there and inadvertently on their shoes or their pants or their clothing picked up some particles of that dirt or some of that plant material?”
Fisher replied in a dry, matter-of-fact tone, “It was my decision. We did not take any soil samples or vegetation samples.”
To casual observers, it might appear that Young had revealed an oversight. But most investigators would realize that traces of desert sand on a suspect's shoes or clothing would prove nothing, other than perhaps the individual had been somewhere in the Mojave Desert at some vague time.
Bobby Grace rose to ask questions regarding the point, but he changed his mind. Judge Wesley excused Sergeant Fisher.
 
 
The next witness, Minh Tran, walked into the courtroom with the grace and appearance of a fashion model. The black suit she wore minimized her female charms, and no one would have guessed that she had worked for San Bernardino County as a criminalist. Now with the FBI, Tran spoke of the desert heat on June 16 where the body was found. She had spent hours looking for evidence at the crime scene, all unsuccessful.
A nice-looking young man named Rick Stadd replaced her on the stand. He wore a dark suit and styled his hair in a somewhat spiked, modern fashion. A DNA specialist, Stadd worked for a Dallas, Texas, firm. The swabs from the mouth of Kristin's mother and samples of bloodstains from Cole Crest had been submitted to him for analysis.
While Stadd answered questions from Bobby Grace, the big screen showed charts Ron Bowers had prepared. Jurors could see, against a dark blue background, the left column containing photos of the Jaguar trunk, plus five sites inside the Cole Crest house where samples of bloodstains had been lifted. Below that, on the seventh line, a photo of David Mahler appeared, and on the bottom were pictures of Kristin and her mother. Ten columns depicted the various numerical categories of DNA makeup. Chart number one indicated strong similarity between the mouth swabs from Marie Dionne and blood found at Cole Crest. Chart two showed that all of the bloodstains in the house had come from the same person, and that they were not from the defendant. A high mathematical probability indicated that Kristin Baldwin's blood had stained the carpet, floor, stairs, and the Jaguar.
 
 
Larry Young's cross-examination underlined the absence of positive proof that the blood could not have been left by anyone else.
During Stadd's testimony, David Mahler had appeared highly animated in his whispered conversations with Young. He did not look happy.
When the judge called for a fifteen-minute break, a journalist approaching the men's restroom door overheard Karl Norvik talking to Donnie Van Develde. Karl, apparently under considerable stress and perspiring heavily, growled, “Some choice! Go to prison as an accessory to murder or turn state's evidence.” He laughed raucously and then entered the restroom, where he spent several minutes at a washbasin brushing his teeth.
More DNA testimony followed. Faces in the gallery reflected boredom, confusion, or total incomprehension. Jurors, who at first seemed to be taking copious notes, soon stopped writing and watched the screen. Without the graphics, understanding of the information might have been virtually impossible.
The witness stepped down a few minutes before noon. Judge Wesley, who had other necessary commitments for the remainder of the day, excused the jury until Tuesday morning.
The fires still raged up in the San Gabriel Mountains on that Tuesday, September 1, 2009. To make matters worse, the late-summer temperatures topped 100 degrees. The courtroom, though, had been air-conditioned to a chilly 70 degrees.
David Mahler was led in by a bailiff, who removed his handcuffs and watched him sit down. An observer noted that Mahler wore the same clothing day after day. His closely trimmed, thinning hair seemed darker than usual, almost a shiny black. Could he have hair dye available in a jail cell? In a whispered conversation, it was speculated that maybe he used black shoe polish.
The gallery gossipers also took notice of the prosecution's table versus the defense attorney's space. Bobby Grace, neatly dressed in a dark pinstripe suit with a red tie, kept his binders and notebooks in meticulous order. In contrast, Larry Young, wearing a gray suit coat with black trousers and a blue shirt, with a multicolored tie, seemed to have trouble with tabletop organization. His notebooks, yellow legal pads, and a variety of assorted paper were scattered across the surface.
 
 
To Donnie Van Develde's relief, he finally heard the call to resume his testimony. Larry Young's cross-examination over the next hour concentrated mostly on Donnie's allegation of David Mahler pointing the gun at Kristin Baldwin. He appeared to suggest, through his questions, that his client had been attempting only to scare the woman, and had no intent of harming her.
During one animated sequence, Young charged across the space from his table, moving in the direction of the witness stand, with his hand formed into the image of a pistol. He asked if that's how Mahler had done it, or if it was less aggressive in nature. During most of the session, a picture of Kristin frowning remained on the screen. Jurors could be seen frequently glancing at it.
At 10:15
A.M.
, Donnie finally breathed a huge sigh of relief when Judge Wesley said, “You are excused.”
In the hallway, a journalist asked Donnie if his real name could be used in a story about the case. He appeared to think about it and replied, “Sure, use my real name. I need the publicity for my music.” With that, he hurried toward the elevators.
Karl Norvik would still be required to come back and wait for his turn to testify.
 
 
After the break, the next four witnesses completed their testimony in less than an hour.
Anna Marie Nack, with the San Bernardino County Coroner's Department, described how she used the Microsil process to lift prints from Kristin Baldwin's dehydrated fingers. Nack even showed the jury two tubes, resembling over-the-counter ointment containers, which contained the pastelike compound used.
The Cole Crest neighbor whose security video camera captured Mahler's comings and goings late at night, and the long absence during the early morning of May 31, spoke for five minutes. Observers agreed he certainly looked the part of a Hollywood Hills resident, perhaps in his forties, with black hair in a buzz cut, a two-day growth of beard, faded blue jeans, and a long-sleeved black jersey featuring gothic white markings. He said he had installed the cameras about four years before the incident and confirmed giving the contents to LAPD officers.
 
 
At Bobby Grace's request, David Grant, director of loss prevention for the LAX Marriott Hotel, examined what he called a guest folio. “It's like a record of guests who stay at the hotel.” The folder's contents contained documents related to David Mahler's brief stay there on May 28.
Opening it, Grace asked, “Does it indicate approximately how much money was spent over the time period he was there?”
“Yes, it does. If you look toward the bottom of that form, that's the total amount charged to this customer's credit card.”
Grace spoke the question slowly. “Is $3,706.38 correct?”

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