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Authors: Don Lasseter

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BOOK: Date With the Devil
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Karl Norvik, still living in the Cole Crest house, trusted Mahler with his savings, as well as the estate of a close relative. Somehow, Mahler became a majority co-owner of an expensive home and car belonging to Karl and his kin.
Mahler's relationship with Stacy Tipton continued to careen along its rocky path, sometimes fun and sometimes nerve-racking. Stacy enjoyed going out to nightspots where celebrities also flocked. “We ran into Jennifer Aniston one night at a club and saw several other stars over the years.” After one evening of entertainment along the Sunset Strip, Stacy and Mahler stopped at a popular nightclub for a late supper. Finding it full, even at midnight, they waited outside and watched a film crew at work on a motion picture. “I'm a real film buff,” said Stacy, “with the ability to spot actors, and I saw Dabney Coleman there. I pointed him out to David, and he went over and started talking to him between shots. David said, ‘We're having a party' and invited Coleman to come. I'm sure that he wondered, ‘Who the heck is this guy?' But David introduced the actor to me like they had been friends forever. We finally go inside and get a table. David is trying to be Mr. Big Shot. I seriously doubted that Dabney Coleman knew him. He certainly never showed up at the party.”
Mahler's audacity probably worked well for him. His aggressive sociability resulted in a growing network of clients for his commodities trading business. But one new business contact came about as the result of a weird coincidence.
Midway through 2005, porn actor Michael Conoscenti had been arrested on a narcotics charge. He needed a lawyer and told a good pal about his problems. The buddy, known as “Captain Bob,” said he had a very good friend who might be able to help, and he gave him the telephone number of a man named Dave. Conoscenti called and spoke to Dave, but he could only get informal advice from him, since Dave had no license to provide legal representation in the state. But the two men chatted about Michael's problems. This led to more telephone conversations over the next twelve months, but no face-to-face meeting.
Michael happened to have a friend who lived on Cole Crest Drive in the Hollywood Hills. In mid-2006, he stayed with his buddy a few nights and heard mention of a lawyer who lived next door named Dave. The two men strolled over to Dave's place and were invited inside. In the ensuing conversation, Michael learned this was the same Dave he had been talking to by telephone over the past year. The timing could not have been more propitious for David Mahler.
With his underlying ambitions to find a wedge into the world of celebrity and film, plus a long-standing interest in strippers, fate had stepped in to lend a hand. Through Michael Conoscenti, Mahler met Sheldon Weinberg, and he could see a golden opportunity. This guy had the power to open doors that many men, and more than a few women, could do nothing but fantasize about. He knew countless wannabe actresses willing to do anything for a chance to be in movies. He could provide access to being on-site in houses where porn stars performed for the cameras. On top of that, acquaintance with Weinberg might lead to lucrative financial deals. This all appealed to David Mahler.
The new friendship also struck Weinberg as fortunate. He had long been interested in expanding his investments, and considered Mahler's knowledge of stock, commodities, and financial dealings worthwhile. The two men immediately bonded.
The companionship with Sheldon Weinberg and Michael Conoscenti led to entanglements for David Mahler with two women who liked showing it all. One of them would become his “fiancée.”
Conoscenti, as Mahler's new buddy, escorted him to a strip club in the San Fernando Valley. His interest focused on a performer who fit Mahler's preference for diminutive blue-eyed blondes. He couldn't take his eyes off Cheryl “Cherry” Lane (pseudonym) who stood five-four, weighed one hundred pounds, and hadn't yet reached her twentieth birthday. She described herself as an “exotic dancer.” Mahler engaged her in conversations between performances, and perhaps, although there is no evidence to prove it, paid for a private lap dance. She agreed to a subsequent date.
Later speaking of David, Cheryl said the initial relationship was “professional,” meaning he provided her with legal services. But it quickly developed into something closer and more intimate. By early summer 2006, she moved into the Cole Crest house with him.
Mahler's horoscope had suggested he would have an immoderate taste for the pleasures of life, be domineering, unfaithful in love, violent, brutal, and irascible. Cheryl wouldn't argue with those predictions. She got her first hints of it when he began showing up in the club where she worked and provoking loud arguments with her, which resulted in the management firing her. During the ten months she shared bed and body with Mahler, Cheryl fell into some legal trouble. He provided money for her bail, facilitating her release from jail while awaiting trial. She later asserted that she paid him back in full, but he claimed she still owed him $7,000. The disputed debt became an ongoing contention between them.
As the live-in relationship deteriorated, Cheryl complained, David's anger turned physical.
His fury erupted not only against Cheryl, but also at Stacy, who had not given up on Mahler despite his philandering. She came down from Visalia on February 2, 2007. Not surprisingly, a dispute flared up. Stacy reached for the phone, but David grabbed it away from her. He threw it across the room and then violently pushed her into the bathroom. As she collapsed, her head struck the sink, and she landed on the marble bathtub, which inflicted a deep bruise on her lower back.
Appalled, Stacy used her cell phone to call the police. David Mahler was arrested and charged with domestic violence.
Stacy went back to Visalia, and David seemed determined to take out his wrath on Cheryl. During arguments he would push her around. In March, while they yelled at each other, she placed her hand on his open laptop computer. He slammed it into a partially closed position, trapping her fingers and causing a deep laceration. It would leave a noticeable scar. She did not notify the police, but she moved out soon afterward.
If the loss of Cheryl Lane hurt David Mahler's feelings, he didn't grieve very long. Michael Conoscenti had met a curvaceous young woman, Kitty Carter (pseudonym), introduced her into acting in porn films, and brought her to Calabasas to live with him. As Mahler's interactions with Weinberg increased, he met Kitty and was immediately enchanted. It helped when Kitty and Michael had a violent argument, in which he bit her on the wrist. Any remaining conjugal relationship between them came to an explosive end. David grabbed the opportunity. He would eventually say, “I was really in love with Kitty, other than being that porn star stuff. I met her through my client, Mr. Weinberg. He was having these film shoots in his house. She came over for that, and became my paramour.”
Referring to Kitty as his “wife,” Mahler acknowledged that no marriage had taken place but said he bought her an engagement ring. “You know, we talked about getting married. I said, ‘Will you quit the profession?' And she just—she couldn't. And then the whole thing got to be too much for me.”
Stacy Tipton knew of the affairs with Cheryl and Kitty, plus numerous dalliances with other women, but she did not allow his skirt chasing to sever their ties. “He told me about them. Sometimes I would call him, and a party would be going on, and I knew there were hookers there. I would ask, ‘Is that another one?' I think he had so many that he didn't even know most of their names.”
Without admitting any jealousy, Stacy said, “I didn't like a lot of the stuff that went on. I knew all about the stripper and the porn actress.” With a disgusted expression on her face, Stacy added, “I met them. I'd walk into his place and they would be there. Oh, heck yeah. The pictures I have in my mind about that are not pleasant ones.”
Sex between Stacy and David became increasingly problematical. “He could be a little kinky at times.” Some of his desires repulsed her, but she tried to accommodate him as much as her personal values would allow. She later complained, “I'm more of a romantic. Lovemaking is personal, and I didn't like all of that other stuff.”
Silently pondering those recollections, Stacy spoke up again and divulged more. “One time he and I went to the porn industry's convention in Las Vegas. I think it was called the Porn-fest. Those women, Kitty and Cheryl, along with one of their boyfriends, were actually staying in our room with us! I thought, ‘This is really weird.'” Stacy's expression made it clear that the memory disgusted her. She quickly dropped the subject.
The stripper's youthfulness seemed to bother Stacy more than the girl's cohabitation with Mahler. “Cheryl, she was the young one, only about eighteen or nineteen. Oh, my God! She was born about the time I graduated from high school! I have seen pictures of her online, too—stuff she later sent me by e-mail. I didn't really like her. One time I kicked her out of the Cole Crest house. Not really kicked, but just told her, ‘Get out of here.' I was visiting and couldn't believe she would be there at the same time.”
Another element of Mahler's declining existence didn't escape Stacy's attention. At the mention of a need for cocaine, she snapped, “Oh yeah, that was him.”
 
 
The convoluted affairs and fractured relationships with Stacy, Cheryl, and Kitty were not David Mahler's only source of female companionship, some of which he chose to pay for directly.
In his tangled network of contacts, he enjoyed a long-term acquaintance with Atticus King (pseudonym), who described himself as an independent contractor–taxi driver. Others called him a pimp. A rotund African American, King stood five-nine and weighed in excess of 250 pounds. Whether unable to find conventional clothing that would fit his rounded body, or just by preference, King's garish apparel drew attention like a flashing neon sign. His uniform of choice generally consisted of jumpsuits, either brilliant white or glowing red.
Speaking in colorful terms that any self-respecting rapper would envy, King's vocabulary and creative expressions entertained everyone who knew him.
He and Mahler met in 2002, and they formed a bond of professional convenience, along with a personal friendship. If anyone asked King, he would deny providing prostitutes to Mahler. In his version, Mahler would contact the women, and then call King to go pick them up in his dark green-and-white minivan, emblazoned with a TAXI sign, and bring them to Cole Crest or to a hotel. This took place “many times,” and the driver would usually hang around until Mahler and his “date” completed their liaison.
Atticus also insisted that he didn't have anything to do with drugs, but he observed that his cohort Mahler used methamphetamine and cocaine liberally. It worried Atticus when he saw this pattern substantially increase in the first few months of 2007. In addition to the narcotics, David Mahler appeared to be consuming a great deal of alcohol.
According to other people in Mahler's social circle, he was not a pleasant drunk. Some men turn romantic under the influence of drugs and booze; others are hilarious; some turn angry and belligerent. For David, getting high seemed to light a fire of fury inside him, and a tendency to turn violent.
Still, David Mahler could exercise the same charm Stacy Tipton had seen in the early years of their relationship. And when Michael Conoscenti introduced him to yet another woman, Kristin Baldwin, he put on his best face.
The meeting took place before 2006 ended, and prior to an upheaval among Conoscenti, Weinberg, and Mahler.
Kristin happened to be visiting Conoscenti in Calabasas at the same time Mahler showed up for a business conference with Sheldon Weinberg. Conoscenti handled the introductions. David Mahler made the usual flirtatious comments, standard fare when meeting an attractive woman. Kristi Baldwin, gregarious as always, smiled and returned the banter. Neither of them made any overtures for a future hookup.
C
HAPTER
9
“A
RE
Y
OU
M
Y
F
RIEND
?”
Kristin Baldwin's periodic presence in Sheldon Weinberg's home, while visiting Michael Conoscenti over several months, kept her in David Mahler's field of vision. Eventually a traffic ticket she received emboldened Mahler to invite Kristin on a date. She complained about the citation in the presence of the group at Weinberg's Calabasas home. Mahler overheard, and offered to help her out with the problem.
His timing couldn't have been better. Kristin's relationship with an abusive man had ended earlier; so with no regular male partner in her life, she was open to companionship. Grateful for Mahler's offer of help, she saw no harm in dating him. He drove a new indigo blue Jaguar convertible, wore expensive clothing, seemed to have plenty of money, and behaved pleasantly enough in her presence. She accepted his offer to join him for dinner.
While their friendship grew closer, the roots of business dealings between David Mahler and Sheldon Weinberg also increased in strength. But those same roots undermined and cracked the sidewalk Michael Conoscenti treaded in connection to his film partnership with Weinberg. In Conoscenti's view, Mahler, Weinberg, and the actress known as Kitty had been gradually levering him from the business. He couldn't help but believe they had formed a conspiracy to ease him out and take it over completely. Infuriated, he confronted Weinberg, spelled out his suspicions in explicit terms, and moved out of the Calabasas quarters.
At about the same time, Sheldon Weinberg invited Kristin Baldwin to move in. She had been helping out with a few chores while visiting with Michael. Weinberg not only appreciated Kristin's skills, but he liked her upbeat personality. He offered her free living quarters, plus a modest salary, in exchange for doing a few clerical duties, helping to keep the place neat, and perhaps cooking a few meals. Kristin agreed and brought her things to the guest room in the first week of March.
The initial dinner session with David had been pleasant enough for Kristin and she saw him more in the next few weeks. A couple of his tenants at Cole Crest would later say they thought she spent a few nights with Mahler, but no one could be certain. It is doubtful that Kristin felt any serious attachment to him, but, as many women might, she probably liked the two Jaguars he kept in the Cole Crest garage, his money, and the glamorous ambience of his lifestyle.
With both Kristin and Kitty living in the Calabasas estate, they began having conversations. Inevitably the subject of David Mahler came up. At that point, Kitty still considered herself his fiancée. But when she learned that he had been dating Kristin, all hell broke loose for David.
An insider to the ongoing saga of Mahler's love affairs revealed that he and Kitty “routinely engaged each other in vicious physical fights that continued after the dating relationship ended.” In David Mahler's estimation, the romance tapered off to a deep, enduring friendship. Kitty moved out of the Calabasas residence. Her friendship with Kristin remained intact. In April, when Kristin sometimes grew bored with the environment at the Weinberg house, she would spend a few nights with Kitty in an apartment about eight miles from Calabasas.
 
 
Romantic turbulence and business problems increasingly led to stress for David Mahler, and he amped up his dependence on chemical stimulants. If Kristin knew about David's growing drug usage, it did not prevent her from socializing with him. She had known countless people in Westlake Village, Newport Beach, and in Hawaii who felt no compunctions about smoking, snorting, or injecting everything from pot to meth. Thus Kristin drew no judgmental conclusions about people who enjoyed getting high. To her, Mahler was just a guy who could afford expensive entertainment. Several other people close to him grew worried about his expanding drug and alcohol consumption. Sheldon Weinberg would say that Mahler was “definitely” a drug user, “meth or coke, I think.” Drugs may have caused an explosive incident that came in April.
Michael Conoscenti had moved to a home with a gated entrance. Still on amicable terms with David Mahler, he had even arranged yet another meeting for him with a different porn actress. Mahler drove to Conoscenti's address at a prearranged time, and waited outside the gate for her to appear. Never a patient man, he drummed his fingers and clenched his jaws for much longer than he thought a reasonable amount of time, and he grew angrier by the minute. When the woman still failed to appear, Mahler turned his vehicle around, put it in reverse, jammed his foot down on the accelerator, and rammed the gate. The collision did no damage to the car's bumper, but it virtually destroyed the gate.
The noise brought Conoscenti out, shouting at Mahler. They exchanged vitriolic threats before Mahler peeled out of the driveway and vanished. Conoscenti would later tell police officers that he recognized a black woman who had been in the car with Mahler as someone he knew named Crystal. Why she would have accompanied him, Conoscenti had no idea. Her presence may have been only in his angry imagination.
The episode sparked an ongoing conflict between the two men. Michael Conoscenti repeatedly demanded that David Mahler either have the gate repaired, or cough up the money to have it done. Mahler finally agreed to send someone over to fix it. A few days later, a heavyset Hispanic man calling himself “Edmund” showed up. He poked around at the damaged gate and ineffectively attempted to bend a few metal bars back in place. Within the next two weeks, Edmund made several more appearances, sometimes accompanied by another overweight fellow in greasy overalls. They hammered, banged, and scraped at the gate, but made little visible impact. Conoscenti shook his head in disgust, and finally evicted the “repairmen.” The damage stayed.
Frustrated and angry, Michael called David again to demand a proper repair job. Mahler said he would send a handyman over named Donnie.
 
 
Donald “Donnie” Van Develde and his wife, Joni, had been renting the lower studio apartment in the Cole Crest home for about a year. In recent months, the self-proclaimed “rock star” had been enduring some lean times and even had difficulty paying his monthly rent or even buying groceries. David Mahler doled out odd jobs to him, with promises of compensation, but according to Donnie, David failed to pay up.
No one could dispute the idea that Donnie looked the part of a rock star. His lean five-ten frame, blue eyes, unkempt, shoulder-length dark hair, with greasy strings over his eyes, and numerous tattoos all enhanced the image, especially when he didn't shave for a few days. Anyone who judged him as a pretentious dreamer, though, would be badly mistaken. Van Develde had been an onstage performer for the better part of two decades.
In 1984, Van Develde organized a rock band in Illinois and called it Enough Z'Nuff, which evolved to Enuff Z'Nuff. Achieving moderate success over the next few years, with Donnie writing, producing, and singing, the group's best known tracks were “Fly High Michelle” and “New Thing.” In his own words on a
myspace.com
page, Van Develde later wrote, “I'll start by saying my name is Donnie... .You most likely would remember me as the red-haired, lipstick [wearing], big mouthed, drugged up pretty boy that sings like the Beatles ... on MTV videos back in 1989-1990.” He liked comparing his talents not only to the Fab Four, but also to Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, and Elvis Costello.
He had met Joni on the road while performing. “We were in Ohio, opening for a band called Poison, and I met her at one of the concerts. We had some moderate success, but also a lot of very tough breaks. We had a couple of MTV hits for a while there, and I was signed with some top promoters.” He added, “We got in the middle of some political things, an internal thing with one of the labels, and were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. We were being built up to be this next super band, but it all fell apart.”
By 2002, Donnie decided to try a solo career. It fared adequately for a while, and like so many musicians preceding him, he succumbed to the irresistible draw of the Hollywood Hills and illegal stimulants. His career began a precipitous slide. Asked if David Mahler ever provided him with drugs, he replied, “I did one line of meth with him. He really doesn't share his drugs.” He added, “I got arrested once for crystal meth.” By 2007, he had gone through a rehab program. On medications he found himself struggling and doing menial labor in order to pay the rent.
Kristin's occasional visits to Cole Crest resulted in her meeting Donnie. One time, according to him, Kristin Baldwin drove her own car, but she came only as far as the Canyon Country Store on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. From there she called David Mahler to come down, meet her, and lead the way back up to his house. “Her car, I guess, barely made it to the top, so Mahler called me and asked if I would take a look at it. He was at the point of asking me to do every little thing in the way of odd jobs. So I cleaned her spark plugs and did a few adjustments. She was supposed to pay me twenty dollars for the repairs, but never did.”
Van Develde had grown accustomed to seeing women come and go, often staying overnight in Mahler's upper floors of Cole Crest. “I have never socialized or hung out with David or anything like that. But there would always be this green taxi minivan sitting outside all night, sometimes for two or three days. And if any of us who lived there saw David, he would be all loopy. You'd see a black girl and this big, overweight black guy, and they would finally leave in that taxi. Sometimes that guy would sleep in the van out in front of the house.”
The few times Donnie was allowed inside David's quarters, primarily the office, he observed drug usage. “He had this top drawer of a chest he kept opening up and pulling out some kind of pipe and smoking it, and putting it back in the drawer.” Donnie also observed business transactions. “What he does mainly for his income is ... he plays the stocks. He sits at his computer and watches it like a hawk, like he has to react in seconds. He showed me once that he had made a million bucks in one night.”
To Van Develde, Mahler's “clients” seemed strange. “I think he's doing some shady deals ... maybe for drugs or something like that.” The drugs Mahler acquired, though, said Donnie, probably came from elsewhere. “He usually goes somewhere to get them.” It would be speculated that the desert community around Daggett could have been Mahler's source.
Trips to Las Vegas, several with Stacy Tipton, familiarized Mahler with the long drive intersecting the Mojave Desert. He knew of the “Y” intersection at Barstow, where Interstate 40 splits off from I-15. He might very well have also known that some of the desert communities have a reputation for covert methamphetamine labs, and a thriving market for the illicit product. It certainly wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that Mahler, through his contacts with drug users, might have learned some specific addresses where he could buy meth. With David Mahler's need for drugs, not only for himself, but to warm the hearts of his numerous female guests, he could conceivably have made other trips out to areas surrounding the tiny burgh of Daggett. If so, he certainly would have also recognized the area's potential for disposing of anything an individual would wish never to be found.
Even though David had promised to send a handyman named Donnie to repair Michael Conoscenti's gate, it never happened. It would be Conoscenti's problem to have it fixed.
 
 
Most broken love affairs wind up with the man and woman curtailing future contacts with each other. David Mahler, choosing to take a different course, seemed to enjoy continued visits and correspondence with his women. In the middle of May, Kitty's telephone answering service relayed a message to her from Mahler. He asked Kitty and her current boyfriend to join him for a trip to Hawaii, and indicated that Kristin was accompanying him. Kitty laughed it off.
On Wednesday, May 23, Mahler invited Kristin to accompany him to a business meeting in Newport Beach. She still had friends in the bayside community from the time she had lived there after high school. Delighted at the opportunity to perhaps visit old pals, and to eat at any one of the great restaurants she remembered, Kristin accepted David's offer.
In the late evening of that Wednesday, Mahler and Kristin drove fifty miles to Newport Beach in his newer Jaguar convertible. After a business stop for several hours at a Marriott Hotel, they drove to an upscale shopping mall called Fashion Island and pulled into the entry port of the luxurious Island Hotel.
If Kristin had been concerned that he planned to take her to some “quickie” cheap motel, her doubts instantly vanished. The twenty-story Island Hotel offered refined elegance. An expansive check-in area featured dozens of light earth-toned couches and chairs enhanced with inviting pillows. A long walk through the lobby led to a man-made lagoon—a cross-shaped swimming pool offering a fireplace for evening ambience and plenty of loungers. Most of the upper-story rooms, including a lavish luxury suite, provided picturesque views over the city and the ocean beyond, all the way to Santa Catalina Island.
Later discussing the incident, David skirted the issue of whether or not he had told Kristin he planned to stay a couple of nights. A security camera in the lobby captured David and Kristin, along with a man Mahler called his client, at the check-in desk. They could be seen taking an elevator to their room after midnight.
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