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Authors: Don Lasseter

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BOOK: Date With the Devil
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Berndt replied, “You do have the wrong report. That's a search warrant for a different location, sir.”
Sounding chastised, Young uttered, “Not at the Mahler residence on Cole Crest?”
“No, sir. If you will read the report, further down it will tell you the location of the occurrence. It's about the middle of the page, sir.”
“Oh,” said Young, “down on Clark Drive.”
“That's correct, sir.”
All of the gusto had left Larry Young. Ironically, he had proven that even intelligent, well-prepared experts in their profession can make mistakes, as Wendi Berndt had stated. He could manage only, “I apologize. Did you search the office?”
Avoiding a display of triumph, Berndt replied, “Yes, I did.”
“Just to be clear, I meant Mahler's office inside the house. Was anything removed by you or your officers from that room?”
The witness thought for a few moments and then answered, “My recollection, there may have been a letter on top of the desk, I believe, and some business cards. Because of Mr. Mahler's occupation (as a lawyer or broker), I was very aware of trying to not invade any personal files that could relate to his business. So I was not looking through paperwork or files. I was basically looking for evidence of blood or any other evidence of the crime.”
“Thank you,” Young said. “I have nothing further.”
Judge Wesley excused Detective Wendi Berndt, who walked out through a gallery of new admirers for her remarkable professionalism and skill at fielding questions in a court of law.
 
 
Bobby Grace later expressed his admiration of Detective Berndt. “In terms of evidence collection and her presentation on the stand, she was one of the best witnesses I have ever seen testify in court. I've handled over fifty murder cases. Sometimes supervisors don't really have a detailed grasp of the events, but her attention to detail and knowledge of where everything was, and how the scientific aspects related, was extraordinary. Many detectives don't pay enough attention to the SID people to know what to say and what not to say on the stand—why certain things are important in terms of the scientific aspects. They can recite where evidence was found, but unless you can talk about it in terms of what conclusions may be drawn, they don't give a complete picture. Wendi made it clear the victim's head was dragged—where many investigators would have just said she was dragged. Some detectives don't get that they can testify to the logical flow of evidence. The way she framed it let the jury understand conclusions of what could have happened. She was so effective in her court presentation, and you can't put a price on the value of having a witness who is knowledgeable and comes off so well in front of a jury.”
Grace made it a point to also compliment Ron Bowers's graphics. “Ron's diagrams helped Wendi too. We could take the victim all the way from the bedroom into the garage to the point where the jury could see blood droplets in the garage and on the car. This led to the inescapable conclusion that the victim was dragged all that way and placed in the Jaguar luggage compartment.”
The de facto jurors in the gallery agreed that, so far, the evidence strongly pointed to David Mahler's culpability. He had obviously killed Kristin Baldwin. But defense attorney Larry Young had made significant headway in portraying his client as a drug-addicted, temperamental alcoholic whose erratic volatility could indicate symptoms of bipolar disorder. The jury might very well decide that he could not be held responsible for his actions. If so, they could find him not guilty, or come back with a guilty verdict of manslaughter.
C
HAPTER
36
A
NOTHER
T
RIP
TO
D
AGGETT
Jurors next heard from criminalists Raphael Garcia and Wubayehu Tsega, who had worked together collecting the bloodstains Wendi Berndt had discussed. Color photos on the big screen and the use of a laser pointer made their testimony crystal clear.
On cross-examination Larry Young said to Tsega, “You have a wonderful accent, sir. What country were you originally from?”
“I am from Ethiopia.”
“Did you do any lifting of prints or stains—tape lifting on any of the cleaning material or plastic bags found in the bedroom of the residence?”
“I don't recall.”
“Is it correct that you recall the tape lifts and the cotton swabs from the automobile?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Now, there were two automobiles, were there not?”
“Yes, there were.”
“Did you do the other one also?”
“No, I didn't.”
“Were you asked to do any examination of a trunk of a green taxicab?”
“No.”
Young had no further questions. He had apparently been attempting to plant a kernel of doubt in jurors' minds by suggesting that fingerprints of someone else could possibly have been found on the cleaning materials. Or, perhaps, that Kristin's blood might have been inside Atticus King's green-and-white minivan taxi.
 
 
Another uniformed officer from the Hollywood Station, David Kim, spent about twenty minutes delivering testimony about the two Jaguars, using the laser pointer to eliminate any possible confusion jurors might have about which vehicle had made the long trip to the desert in the dark morning hours of May 31, 2007.
The courtroom clock ticked close to five o'clock on that Wednesday evening, and Judge Wesley announced the trial would not resume until Tuesday afternoon, September 8. He wished everyone a happy long weekend for Labor Day.
 
 
All murder trials, in which the bodies were found, feature testimony about gory details of the victim's autopsy, usually from the forensic pathologist who conducted the postmortem surgery and examination. Dr. Louis Pena took the stand at one thirty in the afternoon on Tuesday. A solidly built man, with salt-and-pepper wavy hair, rimless glasses, dressed in a gray suit, with a diagonally striped tie, Pena looked more like a stereotypical senator than a medical specialist.
He spoke of the difficulties in doing an autopsy on a dehydrated and decomposed thirty-one-pound body. Taking the jury through the whole process, he used the pointer to elaborate about inconclusive findings due to badly deteriorated internal and external organs.
One photo depicted the small tattoo of a blue dolphin on Kristin's lower abdomen. It had helped confirm her identity.
Jurors heard Pena's opinion that Kristin Baldwin had probably been shot in the upper right chest, rather than the face as indicated by previous testimony from Donnie Van Develde and Karl Norvik. Conradictory evidence from witnesses is not uncommon in murder trials. Which version the jury believed would have to be worked out during deliberations.
While Dr. Pena answered questions from both attorneys, David Mahler busied himself reading while frequently adjusting his glasses with his left hand. He appeared to be making notes on a pad of legal-sized yellow paper.
The testimony concluded with a photo of the bra and stained sheer white pants Kristin had worn.
 
 
 
A slim, dark-haired, handsome investigator for the district attorney's office replaced Dr. Pena as the next witness. Classic-movie buffs thought Ronald Valdiva bore a strong resemblance to actor Ricardo Montalban, who, in addition to scores of film roles, had starred on television's
Fantasy Island
.
After having Valdiva state his name and occupation, Bobby Grace asked, “At my request, did you and one of your colleagues take a drive from Hollywood, California, to Daggett, California?”
In a resonant voice, the witness answered, “Yes ... to Daggett.”
“When did you take that drive?”
“On July ninth, this year.”
“What time did you start?”
“We started at two seventeen
A.M.
from the Mahler house on Cole Crest Drive in the Hollywood Hills.”
Spectators who had been paying attention to previous testimony realized that the timing corresponded exactly with the security camera video of Mahler's Jaguar leaving his garage in the early morning of May 31, 2007. A map of their route to Daggett appeared on the large screen.
“What time did you arrive in Daggett?”
“The trip took two hours and four minutes. We got there at four twenty-one
A.M.
”
“Did you immediately start your return trip?”
“No, not immediately. We delayed about six minutes.” Jurors could be seen taking notes, perhaps observing that six minutes would allow enough time to dump a body in the desert.
“When you returned, how long did the drive take you?”
“The trip back from Daggett to the house on Cole Crest Drive also took two hours and four minutes. We arrived at six thirty-one
A.M.
” Jurors again put pencils to paper. The Jaguar had been gone nearly five hours on May 31, and Valdiva's trip had taken four hours and eight minutes.
“What kind of driving speed were you doing?”
“From the Cole Crest address down to the main highway, which is Laurel Canyon—leaving at two seventeen
A.M.
, it was dark, winding, and the roads are narrow, so the speed through that portion was quite slow, no more than twenty miles per hour. On the surface streets, primarily from Laurel Canyon to the 101 Freeway, I maintained a speed of five miles per hour over the posted speed limits. And freeway speeds were seventy miles per hour.” A question might be in the minds of jurors. Had Mahler, carrying a dead body in the trunk, cautiously obeyed the speed limit to avoid being stopped? This would partially account for his trip taking about forty-five minutes more than Valdiva's.
“Did you encounter much traffic on the way there and back?”
“There was very little traffic on the way out. It increased on the return trip, but was moving along quite well and did not keep me from being able to maintain my speed. I just had to drive without the cruise control coming back.”
“You spoke of difficult driving conditions between Cole Crest and Laurel Canyon. Does it require some kind of coordination or dexterity in order to make that drive up and down from Cole Crest to Laurel Canyon or the reverse?” (Grace might as well have asked, “Could Mahler have successfully done it if he had been under the influence of alcohol or drugs?”)
Valdiva understood the implication and answered, “Yes, in order to avoid hitting something—yes.”
His testimony ended the court's session on that Tuesday, September 8.
 
 
Wind-fanned flames still swept up hillsides in the Angeles National Forest on Wednesday, September 9, 2009, devouring brush, trees, and wildlife. News reports announced the firestorm only 60 percent under control. Temperatures downtown, though, had dropped to the high 70s.
In Judge David Wesley's courtroom, another type of storm roiled the proceedings. While the jury waited in their room, a hearing took place to air Larry Young's protests against Ron Valdiva's testimony the previous day. He stated that the investigator's assumptions in making the round-trip were full of speculations. Specifically, even if Mahler had driven to the desert, Valdiva could not have known the exact route used. There were five separate paths, said the defender, from Cole Crest to the freeway.
Bobby Grace had anticipated the objections. Early that morning, he had arranged for Valdiva and his colleague to drive each possible route, including the one Ron Bowers had discovered on his trip up to Cole Crest, involving the use of what appeared to be a private driveway. In fact, the narrow passage provided access to Blue Heights Drive, which connected to Sunset Plaza Drive. The man riding shotgun had videotaped all five of the drives.
Judge Wesley gave permission for Grace to show the tapes to the jury.
 
 
One other matter occupied about twenty minutes of heated discussion. Larry Young planned to call only one witness for the defense, a psychiatrist. To accommodate the doctor's calendar, Young had received permission to bring him in before the prosecution rested its case.
Bobby Grace wanted to be certain that no “diminished capacity” testimony would be allowed. This tactic had been commonly used for decades to convince juries that the mental states of defendants had made them incapable of forming the intent to commit a particular crime. Unlike a plea of insanity, which could result in a verdict of not guilty, diminished capacity could lead the jury to believe the defendant could not form the necessary intent to commit murder, thus could reduce the matter to manslaughter. But California voters had outlawed this type of defense in 1982 due to a notorious trial in San Francisco.
A former city supervisor, Dan White, had shot and killed two victims, Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, in 1978. The defense portrayed White as being under diminished capacity resulting from the consumption of too much junk food, largely Twinkies snack cakes. Despite other evidence of premeditation, the jury found White guilty of manslaughter. The story was told in the 2008 film
Milk,
for which actor Sean Penn won an Academy Award.
Larry Young argued that he wanted to show the long-term effects on Mahler of drug abuse and alcoholism. Judge Wesley ruled that Young's psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Miles, could testify but would not be allowed to offer an opinion indicating so-called diminished capacity.
During the discussion, David Mahler sat at the defense table with an angry look on his face, lower lip protruding and eyes glaring.
 
 
With the jury seated once again, Bobby Grace showed the videos of Ron Valdiva's five varying routes. It took an hour, and did not make for good theater. Jurors looked sleepy, and observers seemed restless. But it produced a finding of Larry Young's objection being overruled. A lunch break afterward revived everyone.
The next two hours would change everything.
BOOK: Date With the Devil
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