Date With the Devil (26 page)

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Authors: Don Lasseter

BOOK: Date With the Devil
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Grace glanced through a thick police report, which had been prepared after detectives interviewed Goldberg. With the judge's permission, he handed a few selected pages to the witness and asked him to read to himself. When Goldberg looked up, Grace asked, “Now, did that refresh your memory about what David Mahler said to you on that second phone conversation?”
“Yes.”
“What do you now remember him saying about Kristi?”
Still exhibiting reluctance, Goldberg fidgeted and replied, “Well, I remember he was a little angered or upset that she wanted to go home and ... you know, he wanted her to leave. Do you want me to state exactly what he said?”
“Yes, I need you to say it exactly.”
“He may have said that, you know, he wanted to get the bitch out of there. He says, ‘We got to get this bitch out of here. I don't want to pay for a cab or a limo... .'”
“Did you have any more contact with the defendant concerning business after that day?”
Goldberg mentioned a vague recollection of Mahler inviting him to go for dinner, but couldn't say exactly when that call took place.
 
 
For the first time, Larry Young rose to conduct cross-examination. His initial questions focused on the business relationship between George Goldberg and David Mahler, perhaps to establish an image in the jurors' minds of his client's serious professionalism, as opposed to a temperamental scoundrel who would abandon a trusting woman in a hotel.
Moving on to Kristin, Young asked Goldberg's impression of her. The witness said, “Well, I had ... She was fun, you know. She was bubbly and, you know, we talked, had good conversation, and joked. She had lived in Orange County and had worked there a little bit as a waitress. She was entertaining.”
“When you saw them together, then, initially they seemed to be getting along really fine? Is that right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Did he ever tell you that he loved her?”
“Yes.”
“And then later on, did he tell you that he hated her?”
“Yeah.”
“So this is flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop?”
“Yes.”
Observers could see the first seeds being planted by Young portraying Mahler as suffering from bipolar disorder. “By the way, did you know whether or not he used drugs?”
“Yes, I think he liked cocaine.”
The word “think” brought Bobby Grace to his feet. “Your Honor, I'm going to object unless the witness has personal knowledge.”
Judge Wesley sustained it.
Young rebounded. “How would you have personal knowledge as to whether or not he did illegal drugs?”
Goldberg admitted, “I was with him one night... . He had gotten ... I believe he did some cocaine in front of me. You know, it looked like cocaine.”
The ambiguity gave Grace another wedge. “I'm going to object again, unless the witness has some special knowledge.” Wesley overruled him this time.
Young wanted jurors to have no doubt. “When you say he did some cocaine, in what manner was it taken?”
“Snorted through the nose.”
“And he did that in front of you?”
“Yes.”
“In your relationship with him, did the fact that at one point he's telling you that he loves the girl, and then hours later he's saying he hates her—did that seem unusual in regard to his usual behavior?”
Goldberg gave a rambling reply, perhaps still unsure if his words could hurt or help his friend. He tacked on, “It seemed to me, they had gotten in some kind of an argument to switch emotions like that.”
Young asked, “It did seem rather odd, didn't it?”
“Yes”
 
 
 
On redirect examination, Bobby Grace wanted to know when the cocaine-using incident had happened. George Goldberg replied that it had been approximately a month or six weeks before the hotel incident.
Grace inquired, “Did you continue to do business with the defendant after you saw him snorting cocaine?” The question contained several implications that made Goldberg appear to squirm, but he replied in the affirmative. The prosecutor wanted to know if the drugs seemed to have any effect on Mahler's business efficacy.
“Nothing changed,” said the witness. “It didn't seem like anything was different to me.”
 
 
When both attorneys indicated they were through with the witness, Judge Wesley thanked him and said he was excused. George Goldberg asked, “Can I go home now?”
Suppressing a smile, Wesley said, “Yes, you can.”
Bobby Grace and Larry Young had both scored a few points. The defender managed to introduce erratic behavior by his client; while the prosecutor had shown that David Mahler knew what he was doing, even under the influence of drugs.
C
HAPTER
31
R
OCK
S
TAR IN
C
OURT
Cory Keitz, a former male friend of Kristin and porn star Kitty, settled into the witness chair at ten fifteen in the morning. Bobby Grace asked him about a phone call in the early hours of May 25, 2007, the time when Kristin had been stranded in Newport Beach. Keitz recalled the frantic contact from Kristin and said that he had planned to drive down there from the San Fernando Valley. However, she had called back a short time later to say she had made other arrangements.
Grace asked, “Did you ever see Kristin Baldwin alive again after that?”
Keitz gave a simple one-word answer: “No.”
The defense had no questions, and Keitz left after spending less than two minutes as a witness.
 
 
Cory Keitz was followed immediately by Jeremy Moudy, one of the Cole Crest tenants. Wearing a horizontal-striped T-shirt and sporting a short, dark beard with mustache, Moudy had no trouble recognizing or identifying the defendant. Asked how long he had lived in the residence, he replied that he had rented a room there for about two years.
Moudy named the people who called Cole Crest home. “Well, there was David, myself, Karl, and either a couple or a gentleman for sure that lived ... I guess it was in the bottom apartment. I'm not a hundred percent sure about him.” Moudy had seen the man, but he couldn't recall his name. He spent several minutes answering Bobby Grace's questions about the layout of the home, allowing jurors to get a better grasp. To help them, Grace's assistant operated the PowerPoint show Ron Bowers had developed to provide photos and a diagram of the structure. The witness also described the two Jaguars that David Mahler parked in the garage. One of the cars would become a crucial piece of evidence for the prosecution.
“To your knowledge, what was the defendant's occupation?”
“He was an attorney. And I heard him discussing trading stocks. I think he worked out of the office near his bedroom. I would see him on the computer and assumed he was trading stocks.”
Zeroing in on the time frame shortly after the shooting, Grace asked, “Were you at home on June 1, 2007?”
“Yeah, I was, if you are referring to the early morning that the police came to the residence. My girlfriend and I had gone to bed and were awoken early in the morning.”
“Okay,” Grace replied. “Were you at home on Sunday, May twenty-seventh?”
Moudy explained that he had gone to Bakersfield that weekend. “I didn't come back home until Sunday late afternoon or early evening.” Explaining being awakened so early, on Friday, June the first, Moudy said, “I heard somebody at my door, which connects to an interior staircase. I had been asleep and I think it was somewhere between midnight and two o' clock in the morning. I went to the door, opened it, and found David standing there. He said something about the police being at the residence.”
“Did he say the police were trying to get in or that he wanted to get out?”
“I think both. There was a short conversation and basically I think he was trying to get into my room so he could exit through that side door. And he was just saying the police were there. At the same time this was going on, I could hear through the intercom system. I could hear the doorbell going off, over and over again.”
“Okay, what's the next thing that happened after this short conversation with the defendant?”
“He wanted to get in. And I told him he couldn't. My girlfriend was sleeping. And I don't remember exactly what happened, but I closed the door behind him. And I was heading upstairs to see what was going on or who was at the door, or let the police in. I thought David followed me and went into his own bedroom. And I went all the way upstairs to the front door.”
“And was it, in fact, the police?”
“Yes, and I let them come in. They immediately had me sit down on the couch in the living room. I assumed they were searching the house. After a while, they brought David up the interior stairs to the living room.”
Grace asked, “When you got home from your trip to Bakersfield, did you notice anything unusual inside the house?”
“I don't know exactly when I noticed it—but at some point in time, I saw what appeared to be red stains in the living room. And then later I found some more—a droplet or another red stain in the garage, close to the washing machine.”
“Did your girlfriend live there with you?”
“No, but she was there with me sometimes.”
On his cross-examination, Larry Young wanted to know if Jeremy Moudy had a “close relationship” with David Mahler. No, the witness said, he could not classify it as a close relationship. “In your contacts with him, were there times when he seemed to have a ... what you might call a volatile temperament?”
Moudy thought about it for a moment, and said, “There were times I would hear him yelling. Yes. I don't know I'd classify it as ‘volatile.' But there have been times that I have heard him yelling either in his office or arguing with someone over the phone.”
The answer seemed to please Young and he turned the witness back over to Bobby Grace.
The prosecutor said, “You stated that you would not classify his temperament as volatile. Did he appear to be a guy that was angry all the time?”
“I would not say ‘all the time.'”
“Did he seem unusually forceful?”
“I would say he could be very persuasive.”
“Did he get upset with you or any other tenants about late rent payments or that kind of thing?”
“With me, he was always—I was late a couple of times. He was always willing to work with me. He never really got upset at me, that I recall.”
Bobby Grace sat down, and Larry Young immediately leaped up. “Did you hesitate a little on that question about him being angry all the time? Were there times when you saw him in an angry state?”
Moudy repeated his assertion of hearing Mahler sounding upset during telephone conversations.
Young asked, “Have you ever seen him drunk?”
“I saw him drink wine a few times and assumed he was intoxicated. When I would be going to my room through the stairwell, and his door was open, he would sometimes have a bottle open on the nightstand next to his bed.”
“The times you saw him screaming, did you have any idea of what the context of that situation was?”
“Sometimes he was trading stocks—and, I guess, they weren't going very well—so he would, you know, be yelling because I guess he was losing money. And there were a couple of times we had conversations about ‘Oh, I lost X amount of dollars,' or something like that. And other times I would hear him yelling or arguing with someone in a different level in the house.”
Young, perhaps a little disappointed, had no more questions. Grace agreed the witness could step down.
 
 
At 11:35
A.M.
, jurors and observers watched with interest as Donnie Van Develde entered the courtroom. In Bobby Grace's opening statements, he had given hints that Donnie would be a key witness.
Wearing faded jeans and a dark T-shirt, Van Develde appeared nervous and edgy from the outset. His unkempt dark blond hair reached just below his shoulders, with hanging tendrils that looked unwashed. Two rings on the fingers of his right hand and three on the left provided eye-catching decoration. Both arms bore garish tattoos. Quite slim, he bounded into the room like a sailor walking the deck on a stormy sea.
In the witness chair, Donnie never seemed to make contact with the seat. He glanced everywhere—except at David Mahler, who stared at him with laserlike malevolence.
Bobby Grace opened by asking Donnie about his profession. In a loud, clear voice, he said, “I am a rock music star.” He certainly looked the part. Explaining his background, Donnie spoke of having some good years and some bad ones. Recently, though, he had reestablished his band and claimed to have a new recording contract and numerous play dates.
It apparently aggravated the witness's frayed nerves when Grace asked if he knew David Mahler. Yes, he said, and commented that he and his wife had lived in the same house as the defendant. It unnerved him even more when Grace asked Van Develde if he could see Mahler in the room. Forcing his eyes to meet Mahler's, Van Develde made the requested identification.
Quickly breaking the visual contact, Donnie answered the prosecutor's questions in rapid-fire words, with incomplete sentences and overlapping subject matter. Judge Wesley interrupted several times to caution the witness. “Please listen carefully to each question and do your best to answer it without extra commentary.” Donnie nodded his head in agreement, and then continued to give replies that overflowed with too much information.
Describing the residence on Cole Crest, Van Develde informed the jury that he had lived in the bottom apartment, down the hill, accessible primarily by an exterior fifty-four-step stairway. All of the apartments, he said, were connected by an interior stairwell, too, but the one into his unit had been blocked off.
“What was your relationship with Mahler?”
“Well, we had a landlord-and-tenant relationship, and also in the last few months before all of this happened, we had sort of established somewhat of a friendship.”
“And when he wanted to speak to you, how would he contact you?”
“By telephone—either he would call me if he wanted me to come up with something, or I would just come up the stairs and ring the front doorbell and he would buzz me in. I didn't have a key to the front gate.” Donnie described Mahler's two Jaguars and the garage interior, where they were usually parked.
After a ninety-minute lunch break, Donnie Van Develde resumed his testimony in the afternoon, at one forty-five, with the gallery nearly full of expectant observers.
Bringing the witness's attention to May 27, 2007, Bobby Grace said, “Okay, now I want to ask you some questions about what happened at that time. Do you remember going up to the defendant's bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“Tell us about that. Why did you go up there?”
“I had been waiting for him to come home before—my wife went out on vacation ... went back to her hometown, like a few days. So I worked out an arrangement with David to do a few little repairs around the house to make a few extra bucks, and I was waiting for him to give me a couple of hundred dollars he agreed to pay me. And I guess he went somewhere for a few days, or whatever. And I was waiting for him to come back and give me the money. He came home, and I think he called me about five thirty in the morning. So I went upstairs to get my money.”
“What happened when you got up there?”
“Somebody hit the buzzer to open the gate and let me in. I go to this bedroom, but he wasn't there.”
“Who was there?”
“The girl named Kristi was in there all alone, sitting in a chair.”

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