by Don Lasseter
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?”
A gasp could be heard from a spectator, and jurors’ eyes seemed to bulge.
Using another PowerPoint slide so everyone could see the amazing bill, Grace asked if the bulk of the charge related to a damaged television set.
Nodding his assent, the witness said, “That’s correct, sir.”
The remainder of the bill came under scrutiny, showing the room rate at $250, the cost of liquor, and the charges for room service. An additional fee had been tacked on for someone using cigarettes in a nonsmoking room. Grant also explained Mahler’s request to be anonymous under the hotel’s code blue policy.
Larry Young leaped on the astronomical charges, eager to show it as a demonstration of his client’s extreme behavior, typical of bipolar disorder. “What was going on in that room that would have four hundred fourteen dollars of room service in one day and two thousand two hundred dollars’ damage? This was not a rock star band in there, was it?”
“Not as far as I know, sir.”
“Did you get any reports of someone not in control in that room?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you have any knowledge of David Mahler, whether he asks to be anonymous all the time when he goes to hotels?”
“I don’t know, sir. I have no knowledge of that.”
“Could you tell what he did to that television set?”
“No, sir.”
“You don’t know if he kicked it, threw a bottle at it, or picked it up and threw it out the window?”
“He could not have thrown it out the window. Our windows are sealed, sir.” Even with this explanation, Young had succeeded in implanting an image in the minds of jurors of irrational, violent behavior—a person out of control due to drugs, booze, or a mental disorder.
Young risked putting it into words. “Wouldn’t you agree, looking at the entire bill, for one person, that it indicates someone out of control?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘out of control,’ sir.”
The answer appeared to catch Young by surprise. He responded, “Well, if you’re in control, you’re not going to do twenty-two hundred dollars’ worth of damage and drink four hundred dollars’ worth of alcohol, are you?”
The witness calmly explained that such charges can add up very easily, and the damage to the television set could have been accidental.
Young retorted, “I’m just saying it’s rather surprising, isn’t it?”
With a wry look on his face, Grant said, “To me, sir, being in this industry, nothing is surprising.” The calm, collected witness stepped down at 10:37 A.M.
Then a retired detective from Vermont, Jody Small, no relation to Tom Small, spent five minutes on the stand telling how he had used swabs to collect a DNA sample from Marie Dionne, Kristin’s mother, and forwarding them to a DNA lab for analysis.
Insiders familiar with the case had been hoping to hear from Detective Vicki Bynum. She took the oath at 11:05 A.M. But her testimony would disappoint her observers; she was on the stand for only six minutes.
After identifying David Mahler, Bynum told of the protracted interview she and Tom Small conducted on June 1, 2007. Afterward, she had taken a buccal oral swab sample from the suspect.
Bobby Grace asked, “Can you explain to us exactly what you did?”
Bynum, in the melodious voice her friends had come to know very well, said, “It’s very similar to the way Detective Jody Small described—using some swabs that are provided to us through LAPD’s supply unit. They are sterilized, basically cotton-tipped swabs, each one with about a five-inch wooden handle. I’ve been trained to wear gloves when doing this process. So I put on the gloves, brought two swabs that are sealed, removed the paper wrapper, took the swabs out of the plastic containers, and asked Mr. Mahler to open his mouth, which he did. I rubbed one along the left inside of his cheek, and then rubbed the other on the right inside of his cheek. After that, the swabs were placed into a locked, secured evidence area, where they are air-dried. They were later booked by one of my coworkers.”
Larry Young approached and asked where the process had taken place. Vicki Bynum said it had been in the Hollywood Station room where they had interviewed him.
“Did he appear to know what you were doing?”
“Yes.” She said he had cooperated.
Detective Bynum, having completed the final duty in her twenty-six-month dedication to the David Mahler case, stepped down at 11:11 A.M. She would continue to attend and sit at or near the prosecution table.
One of the desert Good Samaritans, Robert LaFond, took her place in the witness chair. Perhaps thirty years old, less than six feet tall, with a shaved head, goatee, and mustache, he wore a plaid short-sleeved shirt and jeans.
A photo of LaFond at the desert site where Kristin Baldwin’s body had been found appeared on the big screen. Bobby Grace asked, “Is that you?” La Fond said it was.
Answering a series of questions accompanied by color photos on the screen, he took the jury through his and another helper’s efforts to assist a woman whose pickup truck had been stuck on the road shoulder. “It was hot that day, so I just pulled over and asked if she needed help.” He described his search for rocks or sticks to place under her tires, descending down a slight slope to the wash, and spotting something that immediately caught his attention. “I saw a hand with jewelry or watch, and that kind of gave me an odd feeling. So I glanced over again and saw maybe blondish or brownish hair. And then I ran back and told the other gentleman.”
A gruesome picture of Kristin’s body appeared on the screen. Sitting in the gallery, Marie Dionne lowered her head and wept silently. Several jurors noticed.
“Were you able to see that from where you were originally on the overpass?”
“No, sir, I wasn’t.”
Larry Young asked the same question he had put to Detective Christopher Fisher. “Could you drive a vehicle down to that spot?”
“No, sir.”
“How did you get down there?”
“I walked. The road has kind of a bend, and they were parked near the curve. It’s sandy desert, and if you park on the side of the road, it’s really soft. So I walked through the desert, about twenty yards, and that’s how I found the body.”
“Did it appear that any car had stopped in that—that dirt next to the road?”
“No, only where that lady ran off the road and got stuck. I didn’t see no other tracks.”
La Fond concluded his testimony at 11:20 A.M.
CHAPTER 33
“AND WHO ORDERED THE PROSTITUTE?”
Judge David Wesley did not allow time to be wasted. Instead of closing down for lunch at 11:25 A.M., he told Bobby Grace to call his next witness.
Karl Norvik had been waiting in the wings since the trial’s beginning. The long period of suspense had frayed his nerves even more. Wearing black slacks and a black T-shirt, Norvik raised his visibly trembling hand to be sworn in. He immediately asked for some water and took a long drink.
Having told his story repeatedly, first at an interview with Vicki Bynum and Tom Small, at another interview with Bobby Grace, and at the preliminary hearing, Norvik dreaded going through it all yet again.
Perhaps the most difficult part came early when the prosecutor asked Norvik to look over at David Mahler to identify the man who had asked for help in getting rid of a body. The witness said, “He is the person sitting at the defense table, wearing a tan suit and pin-striped white shirt.”
Spectators and jurors took notice of Norvik’s ability to speak in crisp, articulate terms using a high-level vocabulary and sounding as if he had probably earned advanced college degrees.
Grace asked, “How long have you known the defendant?”
“Approximately twelve and one-half years,” Norvik replied.
“How long had you been living at the house on Cole Crest Drive?”
Norvik instantly realized the error in his previous answer. “About twelve and a half years. Allow me to correct my testimony. I have known Mr. Mahler for six and a half of those years during which I lived in that house.” He named the other residents and explained the layout of the house, calling the kitchen, office, and living room “common areas,” which he and Mahler shared.
“Did the other tenants have access to the common areas?”
“Not without invitation.”
“On May 27, 2007, would you characterize your relationship with the defendant as a friend?”
“Yes, I would say we were very good friends.”
Asked to tell, in his own words, the events that weekend, Karl said, “I had been in Orange County working on a project in my profession. I came up for a dear friend’s baby shower in Bel Air. Another gentleman was there with whom I am affiliated. He and I went to Cole Crest at approximately eight thirty that evening. We were together in the living room, working on a couple of computers over some business matters. I would say within thirty or forty minutes of our conference, Mr. Mahler entered with a Latino or Hispanic gentleman. They went down to his room, I would imagine, because the living room is just one floor above Mr. Mahler’s room.”
“Do you remember telling the detectives about that?”
“I am trying to recall. Please understand that this is so traumatic and shocking, it’s difficult to recall in precise detail.” He spoke of being distracted by the business discussion, so the entrance of Mahler and another person wouldn’t have made much of an impression.
“Did you see a woman there at any time?”
Norvik said he had not. Allowed to proceed with his story, Norvik told of his guest departing, of his going to bed at about 11:30 P.M., and being awakened early Sunday morning by loud “vitriolic” noises from the upper floor. Most of it sounded like Mahler screaming profanities, but he also heard a shrieking woman’s voice.
The conflict upstairs hadn’t surprised him because it had happened previously when women stayed overnight. His attempts to fall asleep again were interrupted by distinctive thumping noises, like something falling to the floor and being subsequently dragged. To demonstrate the sound of dragging, Norvik used a trick he had learned as a sound technician. He rubbed his arm against the microphone in front of him. He said that after a period of quiet, an alarming loud “insistent” banging on his door at 6:25 A.M. had caused him to jump out of his bed. He dressed quickly, opened the door, and saw Mahler standing there.
“What did he say?”
“He looked panicky and shouted, ‘I have a major emergency! I need to dispose of a dead body.’”
“What was he wearing?”
“He was fully dressed in a dark suit.” Karl added that Mahler appeared intoxicated. “His voice was slurring and he seemed unsteady on his feet.”
At Mahler’s request, said Norvik, he had followed the defendant upstairs. Just outside of Mahler’s bedroom door, the defendant had stated, “I shot her near the balcony.”
Judge Wesley’s call for a lunch break reminded observers of cliffhanger television shows in which the viewer can’t wait for the next episode.
At one forty-five in the afternoon, the drama resumed, not only in Karl Norvik’s story but in the courtroom as well. As Norvik began speaking, David Mahler glared daggers at him and muttered something in an unintelligible growl. A bailiff instantly appeared behind him and escorted Mahler through a side door. A few minutes later, they returned with Mahler’s wrists in handcuffs behind him. He would remain shackled throughout the remainder of Norvik’s time on the stand.
Picking up where he had left off, Karl wiped perspiration from his forehead and continued his narrative. After David opened the door, Karl said, he could see a woman’s body lying on the floor near the bed, with what appeared to be a bullet hole in the left side of her face. He had been stunned by the bloody vision.
Bobby Grace asked the witness, “Did the defendant say anything at that time?”
“Yes, he blurted out, ‘So, are you going to help me?’”
“And how did you respond to that?”
“I unequivocally told him that I would not help him. I went back downstairs to my room, and just before I entered, he yelled, ‘Well, don’t tell anyone.’ When I got inside, I rushed into my bathroom and threw up, more than once.”
“Can you describe the person you saw lying on his bedroom floor?”
“She had bleached blond hair, Caucasian, not very tall. She wore what looked like a gold halter top and white pants.”
“Do you remember telling a detective the pants were ‘sheer’?” Norvik said he had probably used that terminology.
“Did you see any movement at all, any signs of life?”
“No—no signs of breathing, and it looked to me to be very much in a dead state.”
“When the defendant told you he had shot her, did he say anything about it being in self-defense?”
“No.”
“Did he ever tell you she had a kni
fe?”
“No.”
Asked about having any knowledge of Mahler possessing a gun, Norvik said, “A few weeks before that awful night, I was in one of the common rooms and he told me, ‘I have a surprise.’ He went to his office, one floor above, and brought back a silver revolver. I would say the barrel was about four to six inches. He took it out of a leather holster, the kind you would put under a jacket. He said, ‘Be careful, it’s loaded.’ I asked him what kind of a gun it was, and he said it was a thirty-eight. From having watched cop shows, I thought it was what is commonly called a Saturday-night special. He indicated to me that it was, quote, ‘clean,’ meaning unregistered and with no serial numbers.”
Directing the witness’s attention back to his room after seeing the body, Grace asked what took place. Norvik described his sickened feelings and confusion. A little later, he said, he had a balcony-to-balcony conversation with Donnie Van Develde, in which he “played dumb,” pretending that he hadn’t yet learned of the shooting upstairs. They discussed the event further when Donnie came upstairs to Karl’s room, and agreed to keep their mouths shut. Both men kept mum until Karl decided, on the last day of May, that he had to call the police.
Explaining why he had not called sooner, Norvik admitted abject fear of Mahler. “Here’s a person who is showing me a dead body, asking me to dispose of it and be an accessory to murder. I had knowledge of his unregistered weapon. I had seen a big bullet hole in the victim’s face. A lot of thoughts went through my mind. This man was a powerful, wealthy attorney with a lot of contacts. It seemed to me I was in a dangerous, untenable position.”
Bobby Grace turned the witness over to Larry Young an hour later. The defender asked questions designed to reveal more about his client’s drug usage, drinking habits, and volatile, inconsistent behavior. Karl Norvik’s concentrated stare into Young’s face, showing his determination to respond forcefully, reflected his indignant feelings about David Mahler.
