Date With the Devil (10 page)

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Authors: Don Lasseter

BOOK: Date With the Devil
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Mahler interrupted Norvik's observation. “So, are you going to help me?” he demanded rather than inquired.
The world seemed to revolve faster for Norvik, in a dizzy spin. Recalling it, he said, “At that moment, I was just so shocked. The feeling of your-whole-life-passing-before-your-eyes kind of thing, and thinking about my family and personal safety and not knowing what to think. I have known this man for years and years—a longtime dear friend. And it was just a lot to absorb in a moment, emotionally impacted.”
Despite his mental chaos, Karl Norvik managed a one word answer: “No!”
Without even looking at Mahler, he lurched back down the stairway and entered his own room again. Just before he closed the door, he heard Mahler bark, “Well, don't tell anyone.”
Without pause, Karl kneeled in the bathroom and threw up. Thinking he had regained his composure, Norvik stood, but he had to drop down again, twice more, to heave out his guts.
The advice, or demand, to keep his mouth shut had kept Norvik silent for four full days of terror and worry. He would later confide good reasons for his fear. Months earlier, during a driving trip to Las Vegas with Mahler, it had shocked him to learn that David was sending text-messaged death threats to Cheryl Lane. Also, said Norvik, David had “engaged some people” to plant drugs on her so she would be sent to prison.
Worse yet, according to Norvik's recollection, Edmund, who had been supplying meth to Mahler, had secretly informed him that Mahler had offered $100,000 to kill both Donnie and Karl. Edmund had rejected it. Whether or not it had been true, or a threat designed to ensure their silence, could never be proven.
When he could stand it no longer, at about midnight on Thursday, May 31, Norvik made a tough decision. Driven by moral, legal, and ethical motives, he decided that he must do the right thing. First, though, he felt honor bound to notify Donnie Van Develde. Karl knew that Donnie also had knowledge of the shooting and had seen the victim's body. He telephoned the other tenant and advised him, “Donnie, I'm going to call the police and report this. You might want to get out of the house.”
In every Hollywood screenplay, a key character must make a life-changing choice, often a heroic action that brings about resolution and redemption. Karl Norvik took on that role.
By dialing 911, Norvik set in motion the confusing chain of communication that relayed through the Orange County Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, to a radio telephone operator, and finally to the night watch at the Hollywood Station. Before 1:00
A.M.
, Friday, June 1, information that someone named David Alan Mahler had shot a woman in the face reached night watch detective Ray Conboy. He notified Homicide Unit supervisor Wendi Berndt at her home, and she called out two top detectives, Vicki Bynum and Tom Small.
C
HAPTER
11
“T
HAT'S
W
HAT
K
EEPS
I
T
I
NTERESTING
”
In Hollywood, art often imitates life. Detective Tom Small, who would partner with Vicki Bynum as lead investigators in the David Mahler case, had actually participated in the making of a movie. It happened when Paul Newman, James Garner, and Gene Hackman shot several scenes from their 1998 movie
Twilight
inside the Hollywood Station. Small not only met them, but he also had a short appearance in the film. Recalling the whole experience, he said, “Paul Newman seemed a little remote and intent on learning his part. But James Garner was very friendly and down-to-earth. I talked to him quite a bit.” During the filming, Small befriended the late actor John Spencer. They had coffee together frequently and shared experiences in lively conversations. “He was a great guy who could relate well to us because he had a police officer in his family, and a firefighter, both in New York.”
Working with James Garner brought back memories for Small from a previous meeting with the star. “I had met him before when I was in Rampart Division. My boss there, Ron Dina, was a lieutenant who had been Garner's bodyguard. One day he summoned me and my partner to Cedars-Sinai Hospital. We were thinking, ‘What did we do wrong?' A little nervous, we arrived at the designated floor. Ron told us with kind of a stern look on his face to go into the coffee room and wait—just to stand by.
“We thought we were really in trouble. A couple of minutes later, he walked in, followed by James Garner. Garner had undergone heart surgery recently, was recovering, and wanted to meet us. He even had an LAPD hat on. Dina had told him about an event my partner and I did—delivering a baby in the front seat of a car. That impressed Garner so much, he wanted to meet us. And then, years later, when they made that movie at the Hollywood Station, he remembered me. I thought he was really a friendly, decent man.”
Other movies had been filmed inside the Hollywood Station. Small said, “One, in 2003, was called
Hollywood Homicide,
with Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett. We met with those guys for lunch and they picked our brains regarding homicide investigations.”
According to the IMDb (Internet Movie Database), Harrison Ford's role as Sergeant Joe Gavilan is based on Robert Souza, who was a homicide detective in the LAPD Hollywood Division and moonlighted as a real estate broker in his final ten years on the job. The scene where a handcuffed crook steals the gun from a patrol officer's belt and starts shooting it off in the parking lot actually happened during Souza's tenure.
Small added, “Other actors have dropped by occasionally to research roles in police procedural films. They ride with us, see how we behave, how we dress, our mannerisms, and how we talk to people. Vicki actually does more of that than I do.”
The personal history of Tom Small would fit a screenwriter's concept of the perfect homicide detective. A native of Racine, Wisconsin, his father ran an electrical fixtures and contracting business, while his mother worked as a bank teller. With an older brother, a younger sister, and a kid brother, Tom admits to being a “little rascal” who wasn't a bad kid, but he enjoyed mischief. “We would hide underneath our house and plink people with a BB gun—shoot 'em in the butt, nonsense like that. We would go down and hop slow-moving freight trains. I almost got skinned alive when my parents found out about that. I guess they had spies everywhere.”
As an athlete in Catholic school, Tom excelled in football—from the fourth through twelfth grades, and during a year of college—playing fullback and linebacker. Sometimes sports took precedence over classrooms, in which he earned a B average, fully aware of his capability to get A's, with a bit more studying. During his teen years, he admired his cousin, a captain in the Racine Police Department with the Homicide Unit. “He hoped I might get into law enforcement, and always said the two best places to go would be the FBI or Los Angeles Police Department, which are the premier agencies in the country. So I had that in mind for a long time.”
In 1972, the military draft system still existed and Small's number came up that August. Instead, he chose to enlist in the U.S. Marines and follow a long family tradition. Nine relatives served in the Corps from pre-World War II to the Gulf War. After basic training, Small landed in Okinawa and crossed paths with his older brother, who was en route home at the end of his hitch.
Looking back, Tom Small said, “When I got out in 1974, I joined a USMC reserve outfit in Milwaukee and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin. I had continued my football tradition in the marines and played some more in college.” As a marine reservist, he attended Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Quantico, Virginia, and earned second lieutenant bars. Graduation from college came in 1978, with a sociology major emphasizing law enforcement. “But what I really wanted to be was a football coach.” Instead, he served three more years in the U.S. Marine Corps as an officer.
“When I got out the second time, I started looking for a job with all kinds of police agencies. I tested and passed for New York PD, but had always wanted to join the FBI or LAPD, so declined on New York. I tested for the FBI successfully, but was placed on a waiting list. I finally joined the Racine PD and worked there about eighteen months while coaching high-school football in my off-duty hours.”
One of his longtime goals came up in 1983. “An offer came from the LAPD and I grabbed it. After the academy, I went to Seventy-seventh Street Division. I was doing fine, and then the FBI contacted me and gave me ten days to respond. I was in a real quandary because I really liked working for the LAPD. But I thought, ‘Hey, this is the FBI.' So I accepted.”
Small soon found himself in Washington, D.C., and once again at Quantico. In a voice registering disillusionment, he said, “When I got into the Bureau, it was quite a bit different from working as a police officer. You don't have the exhilaration of the job. You don't have all the good stuff, which I really enjoyed. It was more the corporate type of law enforcement.”
The FBI sent him to Omaha, Nebraska, and then to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Sorely disappointed, Small made a life-changing decision. “I reapplied with the LAPD, came back on July 1, 1985, and I've been here ever since.” He wore the uniform in tours at Harbor and Rampart Divisions, served in Narcotics and Fugitives Details, and earned his detective's shield in 1993 with the Hollywood Division.
Some people might think working in the Hollywood Division would be all glamour and glitz. Not so, said Small. “The community has a dark underbelly. You do see some famous people now and then, and some of them are arrested. When I first arrived here, they had huge vice problems, some of which still exists. On the west side, you had competition among the prostitutes for street corners. On the east side, you have the transgender people and cross-dressers doing the same thing—males dressed as women. In the lower east side, gang problems exist. So Hollywood has a little bit of everything. You've got skaters, drugs, pornography business, and regular show business, a potpourri of people—the high end and the low end. But that's what keeps it interesting.”
 
 
Responding to Wendi Berndt's early call, before three o'clock that hectic Friday morning, Tom Small arrived at the Hollywood Station within forty-five minutes, and Vicki Bynum arrived at about the same time. Their boss, Wendi Berndt, contacted them by cell phone from Cole Crest. She and Detective Larry Cameron, Berndt said, would continue activities at the Cole Crest house. Meanwhile, she wanted Bynum and Small to interview Donnie Van Develde, Jeremy Moudy, and David Mahler at the station.
Donnie had been waiting nervously upstairs in the roll call room. He couldn't believe he had been pulled into this horrific mess, and he worried that he might be charged with some crime for failing to report what he had seen.
At 4:45
A.M.
, a uniformed officer escorted Donnie into a small interview room on the main floor. He offered coffee, but Donnie said he would prefer plain water. Always loquacious, apparently eager to speak out and perhaps thinking the officer would be conducting the interview, Donnie said, “I'm cooperating one hundred percent.”
“Yeah, you should,” the cop replied.
“I have absolutely no problem doing that. Did Karl talk to an attorney?”
“What?”
Words spilled from Donnie's mouth like a ruptured water pipe. “Karl talked to an attorney to find out exactly what to do about this situation, and he called me [last night] to tell me exactly what's up and that—what exactly we have to do, and he said he would be calling me around eleven thirty or twelve, and so that's why I stayed home 'cause I figured you guys would be coming once he did.”
Bemused, the officer asked, “Karl?”
“Yeah, he told me he would make the call. On our behalf, you know? I never—I never dealt with anything like this in my life. This is—had me in a—had me in shock. The first person I went to when I—made aware of this situation was actually David. The guy that did this actually called me on the phone and told me to go up and look in his room. I mean, like he's a very sick guy.”
Nodding his head in the affirmative, the officer listened.
Donnie kept the fountain flowing. “And I—I just seen—I seen a hand sticking out from under the blanket. I went to Karl's room and told him what's going on... .”
At that moment, Vicki Bynum and Tom Small entered the diminutive room, where Donnie had remained standing during his rattled recitation, ignoring the three vacant chairs. Bynum said, “All right, thank you, Officer. We appreciate it.”
With a smile as he exited, the uniformed cop replied, “Sure, no problem.”
Pointing to one of the chairs that had a tiny bit more padding than the others, Bynum said, “You could sit there in the good one, if you like.”
As if he hadn't heard, Donnie resumed his spiel. “I assumed you guys would be coming tonight or whatever, but—that's why I stayed home, but I didn't know you'd be coming the way you did.”
In her usual sweet, calm, melodic voice, Bynum asked, “You assumed we were coming? Why is that?”
At full pressure again, and spraying in all directions, Donnie said, “Well, Karl, my upstairs—the guy that lives up in—we're—my wife and I are tenants and the bottom floor is our apartment. We pay rent. We don't have any access to the upstairs house or anything like that. Karl is ... a tenant or a roommate of David Mahler, who owns the house, and Jeremy is another roommate up there. They rent rooms in David's house so they have, like you know, maybe run of the house, you know, and everything like that. We don't. But ... should I just tell you what I know just from—just from the beginning?”
Gesturing for the witness to sit, Tom Small said, “Yeah, why don't we do that? You are ... ?”
Slumping into a chair, Donnie gave his full name. Small nodded, and stated the date and time, 4:45
A.M.
, for the recording machine. Both detectives gave Donnie their names; to which he courteously said, “Nice to meet you.” He asked them to call him Donnie.
Bynum repeated his surname, Van Develde, and inquired, “Is it a Dutch name?”
“Actually,” said Donnie, “I'm Italian. That was my stepfather's name.”
The uniformed officer interrupted to tell both detectives that Jeremy Moudy had arrived. Realizing that it would probably take several hours to complete hearing Van Develde, and that interviewing Moudy could very likely be finished in a few minutes, they asked Donnie to stand by for a little while. He patiently agreed.
 
 
In the adjacent interview room, identical to the one in which they left Donnie, Tom Small and Vicki Bynum spoke with Jeremy Moudy. They learned that he and his girlfriend had arrived at their Cole Crest apartment late Sunday afternoon, on May 27, after a weekend trip to Bakersfield. Nothing, he said, seemed to be out of the ordinary. Both of them knew David Mahler to be the resident manager, not the owner. They did not see him that day, nor had they heard any unusual noises. Jeremy stated that he did not maintain a close relationship with David, but that the guy treated him okay. In passing, Moudy had met some of Mahler's girlfriends. “He had lots of women in his life,” Jeremy said while shaking his head.
Speaking in calm, clear terms, Jeremy told the detectives of being awakened in the early hours of that same Friday, June 1, at about one forty-five by the sound of his cell phone buzzing, indicating a low battery. As soon as he shut down the noise, Moudy heard what sounded like someone trying to open his bedroom door, where he and his girlfriend had been sleeping. He asked who the hell was there. Mahler's voice replied, “The police are here. I need to get out.”
Puzzled, Moudy said, he had unlocked and opened the door. Mahler stood there in “an agitated state.” He had descended the interior stairwell, normally unused, into Moudy's quarters. Fighting off a sense of anger at the intrusion, Jeremy stepped out and carefully closed the bedroom door to block David from seeing his sleeping girlfriend.

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