Date With the Devil (20 page)

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Authors: Don Lasseter

BOOK: Date With the Devil
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In the early afternoon, the LAPD helicopter rose again to provide a visual check of the area around Cole Crest Drive for signs of a body or a recently dug burial site. It proved equally as futile as the earlier attempt in the desert.
 
 
On the morning of June 8, a tipster who had seen television news reports about the hunt for Kristin Baldwin called the Hollywood Station with a suggestion to search a wooded area near the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Mulholland Drive. The aerial search team rose once more into the smoggy sky to zigzag back and forth over the Hollywood Hills in the helicopter. They found nothing. It turned out the information source had been a “psychic.”
C
HAPTER
23
O
FF
H
IS
R
OCKER
Several attempts to meet with Michael Conoscenti, aka Damien Michaels, had turned into frustrating dead ends. Investigators had heard several accounts involving him, and they needed to hear
his
version of events.
The connection finally came about on Thursday, June 7, when Detective Lance Jurado reached the elusive porn actor by telephone at six o' clock in the evening.
Conoscenti said, “I've been waiting to hear from you guys.”
“Why is that?” Jurado asked.
“I think you know. It is all about Dave.” He agreed to meet Jurado and Jerry Wert on the corner of Sherman Way and Woodman Avenue, in Van Nuys.
Fifteen minutes later, the two investigators pulled into the parking lot of a chain restaurant. Waiting in his car, Conoscenti flagged them down. The ensuing conversation took place outside, in the lot.
Jurado wasted no time. “What did you mean when you said, ‘it's all about Dave'?”
“Well, I was pretty certain you would eventually get around to interrogating me, when I heard that Dave had been arrested for murdering a girl.” Asked to tell about his association with David Mahler, Conoscenti said it started with his own arrest a couple of years ago for a narcotics violation. He had needed a lawyer, and his buddy Captain Bob had recommended Mahler. Over the next year, he had spoken numerous times to Mahler by phone, and finally met him face-to-face, all by coincidence, while visiting a neighbor on Cole Crest.
The detectives learned about Conoscenti's involvement in porn films and his business arrangements with Mahler, Sheldon Weinberg, and Kitty in Calabasas. They listened as he told of hooking Dave up with porn actress Kitty, stripper Cheryl, and finally with Kristin Baldwin. Anger creased Conoscenti's face as he described the falling-out with Mahler and the incident in which Mahler had damaged the gate at Conoscenti's most recent residence.
Getting to the crucial information, Michael said that two or three days before Dave had been arrested, something weird took place. “He came to my house, even though feelings had been pretty raw between us. He asked me, ‘Do you know anybody who can do dirty work?' I said, ‘What the hell are you talking about?' He wouldn't say exactly what he meant. Instead, he wanted to know if I knew anybody who could do a ‘disposal' job.”
“Did he explain what that was supposed to mean?”
“Not really. All he said was ‘I got guys that already fucked it up.' He went on to say, ‘They did half the job. And now they are after me.' I honestly had no idea what any of that crap meant, and asked him to explain. But he wouldn't do it. About that time, my roommate walked up, and Dave split. He took off. I still was in the dark about his whole pitch. But when he got arrested for murder, it started to make some sense.”
“Did you talk to him again after that?”
“No. I called him the next day after he was at my place to ask him when he was going to have someone finish repairing my gate. He didn't answer, so I left him a message on his cell phone.”
“Did he reply?”
“No. I guess he was pissed off at me. Sometimes, with Dave, you have to say things in the right way to make him happy. Then he might be a little more cooperative. So I left him another message saying, ‘If you help me with my problem, maybe I can help you with yours.' But it didn't do any good.”
“Do you know if he had any guns?”
Michael replied that about two months earlier Mahler had implied having possession of a gun. But it had been couched in code talk, which Dave liked to use. “He was all paranoid—like if someone was tapping his phone or listening from a van with sound equipment. I think he saw too many spy movies.” Mahler had said something about buying a “G.”
“I told him, I didn't know what he meant, so he finally came out and said he had bought a gun for self-protection.”
“Was there any other source of trouble between you and Dave?”
“Yeah. I borrowed some money from him in the past to buy a car, but I couldn't make the payments and he took the car.”
“Do you know anyone named Atticus?”
“I think you mean the pimp who supplied Dave with hookers and drugs.” Michael described Atticus as a black male, overweight, about age thirty-five. “I met him about four times, always at Dave's house on Cole Crest Drive.”
The detectives thanked Conoscenti and left the parking lot.
Michael Conoscenti, aka Damien Michaels, didn't know on that day in June that he was a doomed man.
 
 
With the investigation bogging down and producing no new leads or evidence, Vicki Bynum decided to drive two hundred miles north to Visalia and see what Stacy Tipton might be able to contribute. David Mahler had mentioned during his long interview that Stacy had gone to Cole Crest with him before they stayed at the Standard Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. Later discussing her, Tom Small said, “I think she knew enough about what happened to be scared. According to Mahler, she never went into the house because she was afraid. That's why they went to the Standard.”
In Visalia, an agricultural city in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, called home by more than 120,000 residents, Bynum and another detective visited Stacy. It produced only more disappointment.
Bynum later said, “We were let in and had to compete with about twenty puppies for attention. They were just old enough to be playful, and we were trying to interview her, with all these little guys peeing, pooping, and biting my feet. She appeared to be drinking something alcoholic and felt the effects. She did tell me she was afraid.”
Stacy's fear, Bynum thought, accounted for her reluctance to say anything about David Mahler or what she had seen. Regarding attempts to clean up blood at Cole Crest, Bynum concluded, “I don't think she could have helped him.”
 
 
David Mahler suffered another blow on Tuesday, June 12. He had been transferred to the Men's Central Jail (MCJ), known as the Twin Towers, the largest jail in the world. Near the historic Union Station rail center, it is only a few blocks from the downtown courts building, but still requires inmates to be transported back and forth by bus. On that Tuesday, officers took him to face a bail hearing. However, a judge rejected allowing him to be released. Sorely disappointed again, he returned to the Twin Towers to wait for a trial.
On that morning, as well, Detectives Wert and Goodkin paid a visit to Donnie Van Develde. They took with them a copy of Kristin Baldwin's booking photo. Without hesitation, he identified it as Kristi who had been in David Mahler's bedroom on May 27, crying and begging to leave.
As soon as they left Donnie, the detectives then drove to Calabasas to keep an appointment with Sheldon Weinberg.
Answering their questions, Weinberg identified a photo of Kristin Baldwin and stated that she had lived on his premises since about the first week of March. To help pay for it, she had assisted with some cleanup duties and some cooking. She had disappeared sometime during the Memorial Day weekend.
David Mahler, he said, had been a friend and business associate for about a year. He stated that before Memorial Day, he had given Mahler $15,000 in cash to deliver to a Newport Beach broker named George Goldberg to invest for Weinberg. With a note of worry straining his voice, Weinberg said he had never received a receipt from either Mahler or Goldberg. “I tried multiple times to reach David by telephone after the holiday weekend, but he didn't call back until a couple of days later. He apologized and said he had been very busy.”
“When did you last see Mr. Mahler?”
“I saw him on Wednesday, May thirtieth, when he came over to fix my son's laptop computer. I had given him the money before that.”
“Did he mention anything about Kristin Baldwin going with him to Newport Beach?”
“Yes. He said they were involved in some sort of a dispute at the hotel down there.” Weinberg couldn't remember which day it had been, but he mentioned a phone call from her just before the holiday weekend. She said she needed money to pay for the hotel room. “I asked her why she was in Newport. She told me she had gone down there with David, but he abandoned her. And she was broke.” Weinberg expressed surprise that Kristin had been with Mahler on the trip. “It was my understanding that he went there only to conduct some business on my behalf.”
Weinberg's recollection of Kristin's reason for requesting money may have been faulty. Mahler had paid for the hotel room with the gift certificate provided by George Goldberg, and covered the remaining portion with a credit card. Kristin had probably asked for money or help with transportation back to Calabasas.
“Do you know if Mahler used drugs?”
“Oh, he was definitely a drug user, mostly coke and meth, I think.”
Asked when he had last heard from Mahler, Weinberg said that David had made several collect calls on June 1 to say he had been arrested for murder.
 
 
Tom Small and Vicki Bynum filled in another blank spot on the canvas painted by David Mahler during his long interview. He had cursed and vilified a man named Robert Jimenez, identified him as a police officer, and named him as the person who had left the gun at Cole Crest. An officer brought Jimenez to the Hollywood Station that Tuesday morning.
Jimenez told the detectives that he worked as a bail recovery agent for a bail bonds agent in Torrance, twenty miles south of Hollywood, and had been so employed for ten years. Answering puzzling questions, he made it clear that he had never been a police officer for any agency in California, or in any other state. “I have the greatest respect for the profession,” Jimenez said, and indicated he would like to pursue a career in law enforcement.
Providing requested information about David Mahler, Jimenez disclosed that he had met him a couple of years ago. Mahler had hired him as a bodyguard sometimes. On those occasions, Jimenez said, he was paid to meet Mahler at various strip clubs and accompany him inside. He wasn't quite certain why Mahler needed this service, but he had been well compensated for it, and didn't mind a job that allowed him to watch women strip.
He spoke of another service he had provided for Mahler. About eighteen months ago, he had been paid to pursue one of the lawyer's clients who had allegedly absconded from bail. Mahler had insisted that Jimenez arrest the girl, Cheryl Lane, who worked at a strip club in the San Fernando Valley.
“Did you have some monetary arrangements with him?”
Jimenez said he had experienced financial problems after a divorce and sought help from Mahler. David loaned him $6,500, accepting as collateral the pink slip for a motorcycle. Also, Mahler owed him $5,000 for bodyguard services. About three or four weeks ago, Mahler had given him a check for part of it. That was the last time he had seen David.
David, he said, could be obnoxious. Jimenez had often heard him making cell phone calls in which he always “seemed to be yelling at people. Sometimes he was really cuckoo.”
Regarding possession of guns, Jimenez admitted that he had owned several firearms, but always wound up pawning them or selling them to friends. He adamantly denied any illegal transactions and emphatically denied ever giving, selling, or leaving any weapons with David Mahler.
“Mahler told us that you left a thirty-eight revolver with him.”
Balling his fists in indignant outrage, Jimenez asserted, “I have never given him guns or sold him guns. This guy is off his rocker!”
Asked if he had ever met a woman named Kristin or Kristi, with or around Mahler, Jimenez said he had neither met her nor heard of her.
“Can you account for your whereabouts on May twenty-fifth through May twenty-seventh?”
“Sure,” Jimenez replied confidently. “My girlfriend and I were staying at the Crowne Plaza in San Francisco. We were there over the full Memorial Day weekend, and didn't return until late Monday night.”
Jimenez produced a hotel and rental car receipt to verify his statement.
The lie meter for David Mahler crept up a few more notches.
 
 
Another key player in the David Mahler drama had been elusive and difficult to round up. Officers had gone to the listed address for Atticus King in Hawthorne—a Los Angeles suburb in the South Bay region—several times but without any luck. At last, on the morning of Wednesday, June 13, Brett Goodkin and Jerry Wert found the rotund King at home. As soon as they introduced themselves and explained they were conducting an investigation, King said, “I know what you guys are here about, and I won't help you find that girl's body.”
Goodkin shot back, “What girl's body?”
“Look,” said King, “I know David Mahler, and I saw the news and stuff like that, but I don't know where that girl is.”

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