Date With the Devil (24 page)

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Authors: Don Lasseter

BOOK: Date With the Devil
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I spotted a few trash barrels, and tried to imagine the horrors of collection days, with two large recycle bins for each household blocking the shoulders on both sides, narrowing the artery like plaque clogging the passage of blood supply. I realized that Mahler would have had infinite opportunities to drop the gun, wrapped in a plastic bag, into any number of trash bins.
The supreme hindrance for the first-time visitor is trying to locate the names of the streets. While moving up Kirkwood, I passed unidentified streets, alleys, and private driveways, desperately looking for a Grand View Drive sign. But street markers seemed deviously hidden, perhaps by reclusive residents who don't want outsiders to venture into their private world. Forks in the road create moments of indecision whether to turn or proceed straight ahead. While I hesitated for an instant, some jerk from behind in a flashy sports car laid on his horn, announcing his impatience for my indecision. Making the wrong turn can be costly in more ways than one. The problem is that such an error may cause you to meander for miles, on narrow roads, eventually terminating in a dead end, with no place to turn around.
Kirkwood finally ended, and decision time arrived. Road forks are bewildering. I twisted my neck about 220 degrees and miraculously spotted a small sign whispering: GRAND VIEW DRIVE. Eureka! That is the next street to turn on, but this was much easier said than done. It required an abrupt left turn to proceed up an incline that demanded every bit of power my SUV could muster. The road snaked up the hill as though it was carved into the side of the cliff, leaving nothing on the other side. No guardrail protects the motorist from careening down into the bottomless canyon below.
First-timers are paralyzed with fear as they inch their way upward, come to rest at a blind corner, and pray that no one is coming down. As I climbed, I could make out another road to the right angling skyward. Finally I saw a sign announcing:
COLE CREST DRIVE.
However, I could see no way a car could steer such an abrupt turn to the right leading up a precipitous incline on a single-lane road. Surely, I thought, the city street sign was wrong. No city planner would allow such a dangerous intersection. Cole Crest Drive looked more like a private driveway. I had to pull up, back down, restraighten the car, then ease forward while tugging the steering wheel to the far right. At this point, any normal person would ask for heavenly help to prevent a car from coming down the steep hill and force him or her off the slender edge.
As I rounded the sharp corner, I was treated to a breathtaking, panoramic view of the entire Los Angeles Basin and the city skyline, making me feel as if I were on top of the world. No other city—not New York, Chicago, London, or Paris—can provide such a magnificent view from a hilltop. Now I could begin to understand why residents of the Hollywood Hills were addicted to living up on the Heights.
Around another short turn, Cole Crest gave me more views over the canyons below. I could see the iconic
HOLLYWOOD
on a distant ridge. Just ahead, about the length of a football field, the little street came to a dead end. Mahler's domicile was on the right, a few yards from the terminal point. It gave me an odd feeling to know of the deadly life-and-death drama that had played out inside the rather ordinary-looking house.
Across the narrow street from Mahler's two-car garage door, a ten-foot concrete wall stood against the upper slope. A towering row of eucalyptus trees reached skyward atop the hill. I could see on the ridge's crest a recently built lavish mansion, and to the right of it, three or four expensive homes.
It still puzzled me how Mahler could have frequently driven the dangerous route I had just completed, especially when he was feeling the effects of drink or drugs. I also recalled some mention of him traveling down to Sunset Boulevard via Sunset Plaza Drive. Neither my map, nor my visual inspection, revealed any possible way to do this.
Exploring the terrain on foot, I discovered an amazing secret. What appeared to be a private driveway to the palatial homes above actually passed through those properties and offered access to Blue Heights Drive, which curves downhill to Sunset Plaza Drive. Either by permission of the homeowners, or perhaps by a city negotiated right-of-way, the few people who lived along the north side of Cole Crest Drive could use this driveway as a shortcut. This revelation changed my entire perspective of Mahler's comings and goings. It also cleared up my understanding of his interview statements in which he said the gun might be found in a large container somewhere along Sunset Plaza Drive.
Using the newly discovered route, I retraced Mahler's probable drive down to Sunset Boulevard. Rubbish receptacles along the way could very well have been where he had tossed the gun. When I reached the Sunset Strip intersection, I could see the Chinese restaurant parking area where Mahler had said Kristin's driver's license and other documents could be found in a Dumpster, which never panned out.
Back in my office that afternoon, I resumed preparation of the visuals, incorporating dozens of photos and creating charts for the upcoming murder trial. My experience in negotiating the treacherous roads to the top of the Hollywood Hills certainly enhanced my understanding of the entire scenario and gave me insights for helping the jury to comprehend what were sure to be some complex issues.
Reflecting on the incredible panorama from Cole Crest, I could only describe it as a killer view.
C
HAPTER
28
“T
HE
E
LEPHANT
A
TE
M
Y
J
ACKET
”
It came as a pleasant surprise for Ronald Bowers, often known as Ron, to learn that his colleague Bobby Grace had been chosen as a last-minute replacement to prosecute the Mahler case. They had collaborated previously, and Bowers enjoyed working with the intelligent deputy.
Grace had earned his place as one of the most highly respected members in the district attorney's office, having worked more than fifty murder trials. His performance in several high-profile cases had won admiration from not only his bosses, but from his colleagues as well.
In a trial that had ended just a couple of weeks before Kristin Baldwin was shot to death, Grace had handled the court case of Chester Dewayne Turner, termed one of L.A.'s most prolific serial killers. The jury had delivered eleven guilty verdicts.
Another triumph by Grace had riveted the nation in April 2008. Two elderly women, seventy-seven-year-old Helen Golay and seventy-five-year-old Olga Rutterschmidt, were accused of murdering a pair of homeless men and collecting $2.8 million dollars in life insurance policies. The scheming septuagenarians had provided living quarters and food for the victims over a period of two years, while paying the expensive insurance premiums.
As the prosecutor, Bobby Grace worked to overcome a possible backlash of sympathy by jurors due to the women's age. The defendants gave the appearance of innocent grandmothers who were just trying to help out the less fortunate. Using a PowerPoint slide show, Grace demonstrated their devious planning, which demonstrated extreme premeditation and deliberation. These women, he said, had meticulously spent two years planning to kill the victims. Gradually the jury began to understand that selfish avarice was not limited to youthful killers. They found both defendants guilty of first-degree murder. Handing down sentences of life in prison for each of them, Judge David S. Wesley commented, “These unfortunate men were sacrificed on your altars of greed.”
As firm believers in the use of audio-visuals, Ron Bowers, Bobby Grace, and Grace's assistant, Lea Malit-Crisostomo, teamed up to prepare PowerPoint shows. They had developed the process so perfectly, it operated like a well-oiled machine. Grace could hand Malit-Crisostomo a basic outline of what he wished to accomplish, and Lea would soon deliver a draft for his opening statement, as well as the argument. Malit-Crisostomo, who had formerly worked for Ron Bowers as a paralegal, called him to help supplement and improve the presentation of the Mahler case that Ron had previously prepared for Cathryn Brougham. Their smoothly honed teamwork from past cases helped immensely in the hurry-up preparation for the pending Mahler trial.
Robert “Bobby” Grace credited his family and their lineage for much of his success. “My great-grandparents were slaves. My grandparents were sharecroppers, harvesting cotton in Texas. My father was a career military man who fought in World War Two as an infantry soldier in General Patton's Army. Later, in Korea and Vietnam, serving as an officer in the air force, he was the director of MASH units. He was not a doctor but an administrator. Back in the States, he was the director of a hospital at March AFB, in Riverside County, and at Norton AFB, near San Bernardino. My mother was a housewife. They are both deceased.”
Born in San Bernardino, California, Bobby started kindergarten in that town and stayed all the way through high-school graduation. He will never forget an incident that happened to him in the fourth grade. Only Grace can tell the story properly:
“I was a pretty good kid, and my mother was strictly a no-nonsense person. People who grew up in Southern California know that in the late winter or early spring it gets cold in the mornings, but will warm up in afternoons. So you have to start the day with a jacket of some kind, but eventually take it off when it gets warmer. In the fourth grade, I would go out in the play yard, and wind up losing my jacket, leaving it somewhere on the grounds, never to be seen again. So my mom would get a little crazy buying me three or four jackets every school year. Finally she went to Neiman-Marcus in L.A. and bought me this really nice jacket with a fleece-lined hood. She said, ‘Bobby, if you lose this jacket, there will
not
be any discussion. I am just going to immediately beat your behind.'
“I was sufficiently afraid of that, and really tried to keep a lookout for my new jacket. I was attending a Catholic school, and we went on our annual field trip to the San Diego Zoo. We are all running around, so I come up with the ingenious plan to tie the jacket sleeves around my neck so I couldn't mislay it or lose it.
“We lined up for a class picture, next to the elephant enclosure, with our backs to the fence. The photographer is getting ready to take the picture, about to say, ‘One, two, three ... cheese.' All of a sudden, I feel myself being lifted up into the air. Everybody is looking, like ‘Why is Bobby rising up in the air?' It turns out the elephant thought the fake fleece lining in my hood was hay, and was trying to eat it. I'm pretty much suspended in midair and, luckily, he finally freed the jacket arms from around my neck and I fell to the ground. So the elephant had my jacket for lunch.
“I'm in a panic during the bus ride all the way back to San Bernardino because I know there is no way my mother is going to believe what happened. One of the nuns said, ‘Don't worry about it, Bobby, we are going to call your mom. Don't worry.'
“A friend's mother arrived to take us home, and she kept asking, ‘What's wrong with Bobby?' Her son said, ‘Aw, his mom is going to beat his butt 'cause the elephant ate his jacket.'
“‘Oh, don't worry, Bobby, she will believe you.'
“So I get home, and I'm hoping and praying the nun has called ahead so I don't have to explain. I go in, and soon as I hit the door, Mom asks, ‘Bobby, where is your jacket?'
“So I told the truth. ‘The elephant ate my jacket.' Of course, she didn't believe me. She got my dad's belt and I got a really big whippin'. I'm in my room afterward, silently crying to myself. The phone rings and my mother answers. It's the nun. ‘Oh, I forgot to call, but I just wanted to let you know that an elephant ate Bobby's jacket. We're going to pay for it. So you can believe he is telling the truth.'
“So my mom calls me out and said, ‘The nun called and told me what happened.' I'm standing there waiting for an apology.
“‘I told you the elephant ate it.'
“My mom said, ‘Shut up. That was for all the other jackets you lost.'”
 
 
Following graduation from San Bernardino High School, Bobby attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), from 1979 through 1984. He served as student body president in his senior year. Bobby's parents wanted him to be a doctor, and he took medical courses at first. “I went to a math class, Math 31B, and couldn't understand any part of it, so I switched to political sciences. Pretty much all of my friends were involved in student politics and went on to law school. That sort of drew me a road map... . It seemed like the thing to do.”
After UCLA, he entered Loyola Law School, earned his Juris Doctor
,
and passed the state bar exam on his first try.
Looking back in time, Grace recalled, “At UCLA, I had a friend-tutor-counselor for incoming freshmen named John Caldwell, one of the most brilliant individuals I've ever met. He's a lawyer now. In addition to being very smart, he had a certain charisma as well. On the other hand, he could be a little grating at times. He came to my group of incoming freshmen and said, ‘Look, I'm the smartest guy around here, but I'm not popular. You guys want to be popular, but if you will follow me, you can help me spread my gospel.' We wondered if he was crazy. He was overweight, but had been a basketball player at Fairfax High School. He asked, ‘What would you guys like to do?' We thought we could trick him into playing basketball, to show him up a little. ‘Okay,' he said, ‘let's go play basketball.' We played one-on-one, and without any trouble, he beat four of us in a row. Believe me, he got our respect and attention right then. Then he started talking about some things we thought were important, which at that time was trying to get the UC system to divest some of its investments in South Africa. He explained the only way we could influence that change was to take control of student government. We had doubts. How could we change the system that had prevailed forever, with a BMOC from an influential fraternity always being the student body president? He said if we used the right strategy, we could do it. He was right. We created a coalition of groups—black students, Asian students, Latino students, and Jewish students, pretty much everybody who thought they were locked out of student government. We were the first ones to coalesce. We realized the only way to gain any power was to create a body of activists out of nothing. That was John's genius, pulling together what was thought to be disparate groups, to become a majority. My involvement in that process led to becoming the SB president. And we finally did get the student union at UCLA to divest itself from South Africa. The UC Regents followed up by changing their financial portfolio too.”
Athletically inclined since childhood, Bobby Grace was active in high-school football and basketball. He was chosen the most valuable player (MVP) on the football team where he played tailback and defensive linebacker. After college he decided to take up skiing. “That's a big hobby of mine, skiing and running, and the Lakers. I've skied nearly every major area in North America. My favorite is Whistler (site of the 2010 Winter Olympics), outside of Vancouver.”
From the first grade until his sophomore year in high school, Bobby attended Catholic schools. “I finally got a reprieve from my parents, allowing me to go to public school. The nuns are pretty much as they are portrayed in the mass media. They have their rulers, and they will whack your hand if you do something wrong. At that time, the parochial schools were pretty much no-nonsense. You are here to be educated, and everyone is on a college prep track. I got along pretty well as the reader at mass and as an altar boy. I wasn't out for athletics until [the] last two years of high school. I played Pop Warner football and YMCA basketball. So school was entirely academics.”
 
 
The David Mahler case first came to Bobby Grace's attention through television news reports. “It caught my interest due to the fact he was an attorney in New York and New Jersey accused of killing a young woman, whose body was found in the desert.” Grace's assignment to prosecute the case came at the last minute, due to shifting workloads in the DA's office.
Speaking of the obstacles he faced, Grace said, “There were a number of issues I wasn't aware of until I got into it. I was surprised that no DNA connections had been made, so we arranged to get that taken care of. I was also concerned at the absence of any direct evidence connecting Mahler to the victim's death. The other thing is, Mahler never actually confessed to killing her. Circumstantial evidence led to him as a suspect. But when we looked at the witnesses we had to rely on, in terms of what he did or in terms of causing her death, they were not the best people to rely on. From a character standpoint, these could be the worst witnesses you could ever get. We had an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a porn star.”
To get a feel for how Donnie Van Develde would conduct himself on the witness stand, Grace arranged for him to come downtown for an interview. “Donnie was probably one of the most interesting witnesses I have ever encountered. I came from a gang prosecution background, so you expect to cope with witnesses who don't want to be there and don't want to testify. And for the most part, they have legitimate reasons for this reluctance. Loyalty to a gang or outright fear of gang retaliation can be terribly intimidating. So when we get what we call ‘civilian witnesses,' we hope they will be cooperative and remember things—generally, go the way you would like them to go.”
Bobby Grace could only hope that Donnie Van Develde would testify in a coherent manner. The entire lineup of witnesses worried the prosecutor. Would a jury accept any of them as credible? If not, the case was going to be the first major loss in Grace's career.

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