Date With the Devil

by Don Lasseter

  Two men, pretending to deliver a package at a Lake Tahoe, Nevada, hotel room, kidnapped nineteen-year-old Frank Sinatra Jr. Driving through a heavy snowstorm, they transported him south to a house in Canoga Park, Los Angeles County. Via several telephone calls to Sinatra Senior, they arranged for a ransom of $240,000 to be dropped near a gas station on Sunset Boulevard. As one of the kidnappers retrieved the money, a third conspirator drove young Sinatra along the I-405, known locally as the San Diego Freeway, into the Hollywood Hills and dropped him off under the Mulholland Drive overpass. Close to midnight, the relieved hostage walked several miles to safety.

  Clumsy mistakes by the trio soon led to their capture and trial. Even though they would actually serve only a little more than three years, a judge sentenced two of the men, on March 6, 1964, to life imprisonment.

  On the very next day after that hearing, a woman in Flushing, Queens, New York, gave birth to a son and named him David.

  Exactly fifteen years after the kidnapping date, another birth took place in Ukraine, USSR, on December 8, 1978. The mother immigrated to the United States with her young son, Mikhail Markhasev. He grew up in Orange County and drifted into a life of crime.

  In mid-January 1997, nearly an hour after midnight, Markhasev and a few of his criminal associates stopped at a remote park-and-ride lot to use a pay phone for calling a drug dealer. This took place within short walking distance from the site where Sinatra Jr. had been released.

  A few minutes earlier, Ennis Cosby, twenty-seven-year-old son of actor-comedian Bill Cosby, while driving north along the I-405, near Mulholland Drive, felt the thumping of a flat tire on his Mercedes. He exited on Skirball Center Drive, passed the park-and-ride lot, and pulled over to the shoulder next to a hillside cliff. Cosby telephoned a female friend who drove immediately to the site to aid him by aiming her headlights at his car while he changed the tire. She kept her engine running.

  Shortly after her arrival, Markhasev strolled away from his companions, approached the woman’s car, and demanded money from her. Startled, she inadvertently jammed her accelerator down and barely missed Cosby’s Mercedes as she surged up the street away from danger. Markhasev moved instantly over to Cosby and repeated his order to hand over all of his cash. Evidently dissatisfied with the response, he executed Cosby with a gunshot to the head.

  The female friend later helped a police artist prepare a drawing of the man she saw. The killer is serving a life sentence in prison.

  The strange linkage of events continued. Just a few years later, the boy born in New York and named David Mahler would move to the Hollywood Hills. He would occupy a home on Cole Crest Drive, less than five miles from the site where Ennis Cosby died and where Frank Sinatra Jr. was released. That hillside residence eventually became the site of yet another tragic murder.

  David “Dave” A. Mahler, the first of three children delivered by his mother, grew up in comfortable circumstances, first in New York’s Long Island and later in New Jersey. His father, a dedicated workaholic, accrued considerable wealth as a stockbroker and commodities trader, which enabled him to provide everything his wife, son, and two daughters could want. But underlying tensions resulted in familial strain. Arguments flared between the parents, as well as between father and son. Eventually the marriage ended in divorce, and David’s father soon remarried.

  A popular website of horoscopes makes some interesting observations about David Mahler based on his birthplace, date, and time. It suggests that he is full of self-confidence and likes to dominate. He overcomes difficulties through sheer willpower. A taciturn person, he would have few close friends due to a reserved nature. Perhaps loved insufficiently by his parents, he would never get carried away by love for others. Irascible, he likes to criticize and contradict. His arguments are noisy and animated. A key weakness, the horoscope notes, is an immoderate taste for the pleasures of life, gambling, entertainment, and luxury. In relationships he likes amorous adventures, and, “of course,” is unfaithful if he has a serious relationship: He boils over, and is easily exasperated, with difficulty in controlling himself. Influenced by the opposing positions of Pluto and Mars at the time of birth, He is violent, brutal, and irascible. He succeeds in crushing others without giving it a thought.

  It would turn out to be remarkably on target.

  Nothing extraordinary marked David’s childhood. He accepted his parents’ Jewish heritage, but followed the tenets marginally. The family lived in Long Island, until David turned thirteen, then moved to Bergen County, New Jersey, just below the New York border.

  In elementary and high school, he earned better than average grades; even though, according to a personal admission he made years later, he enjoyed using cocaine before graduating the twelfth grade. “It was a bad vice, but I liked coke.”

  David decided to leave home for his college education, but he didn’t venture too far. Fairfield University, in Fairfield, Connecticut, is an approximate thirty-mile drive from his parental home.

  The respected institution boasts a pastoral campus offering scenic views and all the amenities of a major, comprehensive university in a setting of rolling hills, sprawling lawns, picturesque ponds, and bucolic wooded areas. One former associate of Mahler’s expressed the opinion that David’s influential grandfather helped ease the way for admission and finances.

  David’s selection of studies might have been influenced not only by his father’s success in business, but by notable alumni of Fairfield. These have included E. Gerald Corrigan, the seventh president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Joseph DiMenna, a pioneer in hedge fund management, and William P. Egan, a venture capital leader.

  Or, he may have followed the legal profession path set by Fairfield alumni Raymond J. Dearie, chief judge of the U.S. District Court, Eastern New York District; Joseph P. Flynn and William Lavery, chief judges of the Connecticut Court of Appeals; or Joseph Russoniello, two-term U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California.

  The latter group possibly carried more weight with David, since he moved next to New York University of Law, on NYU’s Greenwich Village campus. Established in 1835, this prestigious model of academia produced a long list of notable graduates. Among them were former New York City mayors Fiorello LaGuardia, Ed Koch, and Rudy Giuliani, as well as sportscaster Howard Cosell and John F. Kennedy Jr. Other legal eagles from the famed university later flew west to Hollywood. They included former chairman of Paramount Pictures Jonathan Dolgen, Hollywood and Broadway producer Marc E. Platt, and producer/former chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment Peter Guber. David certainly found no shortage of role models while earning his degree, which he took in 1991.

  By this time in his life, at age twenty-seven, Mahler had developed into a sturdy, solidly built man. Standing one inch over six feet, he weighed about 190 pounds. With dark brown hair, brown eyes, and a smooth, oval face, under a high, wide forehead, his features would appeal to many women. Adopting a serious demeanor in both personal and business dealings, he sometimes gave the impression of being overbearing or threatening. He didn’t smile often. When he did, he compressed his lips, giving them a brittle look. Now and then, Mahler allowed his temper to leap out of control. Still, he could be charming and gallant with his dates.

  After passing bar exams for both New York and New Jersey, Mahler set up a private practice. He rented an apartment in Hackensack, New Jersey, across the street from a residential co-op, where his grandmother lived. Using a room in his living quarters as an office, Mahler began representing clients in divorce cases, civil suits, and an occasional criminal defense. As his business grew, he also defended narcotics and prostitution cases and then branched into Wall Street civil suits.

  As David Mahler’s workload increased, so did his bank account. Following the pattern set by his father, he dabbled in Wall Street investments, and provided financial advice to his clients.

  According to a longtime friend, David also enjoyed associating with alleged underworld characters. He
sometimes patronized nightclubs favored by these people and occasionally accepted invitations to attend their social functions. At these times, David would caution his companion, “If I introduce myself as ‘Anthony,’ just go along with it.” But he wouldn’t explain why he wanted to use a phony name. Nor would he acknowledge any monetary transactions involving the so-called Mafia connections.

  With an ever-expanding network of clients and cases, Mahler’s practice required traveling to other states. In the final days of the 1980s, he jetted to Southern California and met someone who would share the next twenty years of his life, on and off.

  Two women who would play crucial roles in David Mahler’s future chose to spend segments of their lives in Newport Beach, an affluent, picturesque Pacific Coastal city in Orange County. Blessed with a scenic bay, populated islands, and magnificent residential sites, the city harbors a fleet of yachts and overflows with garish mansions. John Wayne occupied a home in Newport for many years and moored his 136-foot pleasure boat, The Wild Goose, within a few steps of his bayfront estate. He could often be seen patronizing, in both food and drink, a nearby restaurant known as the Arches. One of the most popular beaches in Southern California graces Newport’s shoreline. The pier and the white sand attract thousands of visitors year-round.

  A diminutive blonde, with a knockout figure and blue-green eyes, lived near the beach in the late 1980s. Stacy Tipton had been born and raised in Visalia, about 220 miles north of Newport, in 1963. After high school, and a short tenure at the local College of the Sequoias, she had accompanied a girlfriend south to attend Orange Coast College. She earned an Associate of Arts degree and continued her studies at Cal State, Long Beach. Sharing quarters with her pals, Stacy worked first as a receptionist for an advertising firm, then later for a boat sales agency. She characterized her time in the bay community as “living the good life in Newport with the other beach bums.”

  While Stacy enjoyed a few drinks with some friends one evening in the Cannery Restaurant, right next to the bay, she made the acquaintance of a man with a New Jersey accent. “I met David Mahler when he was visiting from New York. He was at the restaurant with a mutual friend. He asked for my phone number and he gave me his. I think this was about 1988.”

  The brief encounter might have ended there, but an odd coincidence kept it alive. “The following week, I was with a girlfriend and we stopped by another friend’s house. And David was there! My friend didn’t know that we had already met. It was really strange. At first, David and I were just sort of like pals with friendly flirtations, but grew fonder of each other through phone calls. Then, when he got busy in New York, I didn’t hear from him for quite a while. But one night, while I was still living in Newport, I got a call really late and it was him. He said he was going through his old phone messages and found one from me. After that, we corresponded regularly. He sent me a ticket to New York, and that began a series of visits. I would fly back and forth, and wound up living with him in the East.”

  Asked if she had been attracted to David Mahler from the very beginning, Stacy replied, “Well, it was really hard not to be. He was very charismatic. I made the trip back and forth at least ten times, and we fell head over heels in love.”

  Stacy moved in with Mahler, despite reservations by her mother in Visalia. “She was very hesitant about it because I would be so far away. David assured her that she need not worry and that he would take good care of her little Stacy.”

  In the apartment they shared, Stacy helped him with his legal work, performing mostly clerical and typing duties. But they also found time for entertainment. “We had so many wonderful times. We went to Atlantic City, the Hamptons, to New York City, just all kinds of fun stuff. One of my favorite times was when we went over to the city and we caught a hansom cab for a ride around Central Park. It was absolutely beautiful. He explained he was trying to get me to marry him. I wouldn’t say yes, so he said, ‘Let’s just do the whole ride again.’ It was so much fun. I think he knew that even if I agreed, he could deny the whole thing—as an attorney—and say he was just drunk.”

  Mahler, Stacy said, had been quite generous with her. “We used to go get our hair styled together. I would get a five-hundred-dollar styling and we’d have our nails done. It was so nice having a guy you could run around with and do things like that.”

  His generosity went a little too far with one gift David presented to Stacy. She laughed with embarrassment when speaking of it. “He decided he wanted to get me this certain toy. It was before Rudy Giuliani put a crackdown on all this stuff, and David bought this ‘machinery.’ I didn’t want anything to do with it. I didn’t want it, so he decided to take it back to the store. Picture him, getting on the subway with it. He didn’t wrap it. Everybody could see, and he didn’t care. The store was closed at first, and he had to carry it all over town. He finally goes there, handed it over, and said, ‘She wore it out.’ Talk about making me blush.”

  A more pleasant recollection Stacy chose to talk about regarded another remarkable coincidence. “One time we went to the top of the Empire State Building when he was showing me all of the sights. You go up elevators to a certain point and then get in line for another ride to the top. We were in line and struck up a conversation with another couple. They were tourists and we asked where they were visiting from. One of them said, ‘Oh, a little place in California you’ve never heard of, I’m sure.’ I said, ‘Well, try me.’ They said, ‘Visalia.’ I couldn’t believe it. He worked for someone I went to high school with. So that was kind of fun.”

  When the first Christmas drew near, David took Stacy to spend the holiday with her parents. “That was the first time he met them. He and my dad got along handsomely. The next year, we spent Thanksgiving with them. We would alternate being with his parents for one holiday and with mine the next holiday, and then reverse them the following year. His mother was a wonderful woman, and his dad is extremely strong-willed. I really liked his stepmother too, who is a very nice woman.”

  One particular aspect of Stacy’s relationship with David’s father, an expert in commodity trading, delighted her. “He would do all this analyzing of stocks, and then I would pick one at random, and mine almost always outperformed his.”

  Relationships between Stacy and David’s family also extended to his sisters. “Beth was wonderful. Alice, I didn’t know that well.” Asked if Mahler had conflicts with them, Stacy could only grimace and say, “Isn’t there always issues between siblings?”

  Even if David at first seemed “charismatic” to Stacy, she could see a few conflicting characteristics. “He had a good sense of humor, but sometimes it didn’t show. You would say something off the cuff that you thought was funny and he wouldn’t crack a smile. He really wasn’t much of a joke teller.” In trying to identify what Mahler did laugh at, Stacy couldn’t think of anything. She rationalized, “Sometimes his idea of comedy would go over other people’s heads.” She cited an incident in which they were playing Monopoly with some relatives. “The game requires some intelligence and they were playing like yo-yos. David was just running the board and they didn’t even get what he was doing. He and I were on the same page and we were just cracking up. In the conversation, the subject of capitalism came up, and they had no idea what we were talking about. That’s the whole concept of Monopoly. I guess they took offense. The woman said to me, ‘You just wait. I know you are laughing at me, but someday you will get yours.’” Describing this, Stacy’s face turned grim. Obviously reflecting on events that would change her life, she said, “That was terribly ironic.”

  After Stacy lived with Mahler most of a two-year period, during which misunderstandings and arguments became more frequent, she began visiting her family in Visalia more often, and staying there for longer periods of time. Asked if David lost his temper easily, Stacy hesitated. She thought about it and said, “He used to be an absolutely terrific person.”

  “Did you see that gradually change?”

  “Yes.”
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br />   To the suggestion that something deep inside David drove him to undergo drastic changes, Stacy said, “We all blame circumstances and different people for stuff in our lives. But then, you just get over it. There were some things he didn’t get over, and it breaks my heart. I wish I could have been the person who could help him get through all of that. But it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it was.”

  A different twist on Mahler’s interests in women became apparent to Stacy, something she had not previously recognized. He seemed to be fascinated with strippers. At least he made no attempt to hide it, and even invited Stacy to accompany him to the joints where dancers disrobed. “Back East, I went to a few strip clubs with him. I thought they were kind of funny.”

  Other cracks in the relationship planted seeds of doubt in Stacy’s mind. She recalled, “We went for a drive one time and he showed me their old house from when his parents were still married. When his grandmother passed away, I was there for her wake, and David took that really hard.” It puzzled Stacy when she learned the grandmother had lived right across the street from their apartment—yet she had never met the woman.

  Regarding Mahler’s use of alcohol or other stimulants, Stacy took a noncommittal stance. “I don’t partake in any of that.” Asked again, she replied, “I saw a lot of things.”

  Another incident set a pattern that Mahler would repeat too often. “I went to the city with David to attend the wedding of one of his friends. Both of us dressed formally. I wore a long black gown, with gloves up past the elbows, and had my hair done up perfectly. It was a beautiful ceremony. But at a gathering afterward, he took me to a joint with a band, and the place was filled with cigarette smoke. I can’t stand that vile smell and we got into an argument. He said some hurtful things and then abandoned me. There I was in New York City, in midwinter, with very little money and no warm clothing. I had planned to go to Visalia afterward and had my plane ticket, but no transportation to the airport. I finally talked a cabdriver, who was from India or Iran or somewhere like that, into giving me a ride to the airport.”