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Authors: Don Lasseter

BOOK: Date With the Devil
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Peter Means also recognized Kristin's esteem among her peers. “It is correct that she was elected as most popular. She was a real social person and friends with everyone, with no fear of people. Kristin would talk to anyone, no matter what social level, rich or poor. She loved working with handicapped kids and volunteered with an Easter Seals group. The kids adored her because she was a lot of fun. Bubbly and outgoing, she could relate to them.”
At the time they first moved to Westlake Village, Robin and Kristin were impressed with the knowledge that numerous celebrities lived in the enclave. Robin said, “Of course, growing up there, we had a lot of stars in our lives. Every summer we went to Catalina Island for ten days. We met Arnell Simpson, O.J.'s daughter there. She was a good friend of ours. In our neighborhood, we often saw Heather Locklear and Courteney Cox. Her dad was friends with my dad. We often ran into celebrities. Jayne Mansfield's son grew up in Westlake and was best friends with Vicky, who was my best friend. So we were always interacting with someone who had links to celebrity. We'd go to the Malibu chili cook-off and see Charlie Sheen and his brother Emilio Estevez. That was all part of being raised where we were. We spent a lot of time in the beach area, especially at Malibu. As we got older, we were no longer awed by celebrities. We realized they were just regular people too.”
Kristin's exposure to people in show business inspired a growing fantasy. Her bright mind, creative wit, trim stature, and mesmerizing emerald green eyes gave her the potential to fit right into the Hollywood scene. Early on, she appeared to have entertainment skills. Robin spoke of her terrific knack for hearing people's accents and imitating them perfectly. “She made it hilarious. She had a great sense of humor and was always laughing. We can thank our father, Peter, for that. He is a very intelligent man and taught us that humor can get you through hard times. She was always in the spotlight and wanted to be an actress. But she never made any real plans to do anything about it. She just said, maybe someday.”
Jennifer agreed. “She did. She told me she wanted to be in movies someday.”
All four of Marie's children had been legally adopted by Peter Means, so they all took his surname. Later, though, Kristin would revert to Baldwin for a convenient reason. Peter knew all about it and understood.
Rudyard Kipling wrote,
Never praise a sister to a sister... .
If he had lived to know Robin, Kristin, and Stephanie, Kipling might have rescinded his comment. These siblings generously praised one another mutually or to anyone else who would listen. In introducing Kristin to strangers, Robin would proudly say, “This is my sister.”
C
HAPTER
3
A S
AD
R
IDDLE
Detectives Christopher Fisher and Mike Gilliam, of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department (SBCSD), Homicide Unit, sped across the desert and arrived at the body discovery site a little before noon. They realized that the witnesses, Allura McGehay, Robert LaFond, and Christopher De Witt, had been wilting in the blazing heat too long. After interviewing them briefly and noting vital information, Gilliam released the two men so they could continue to their original destinations.
A tow truck had shown up prior to the detectives' arrival and had pulled Allura's Dodge pickup out of the sandy shoulder trap. She, too, breathed a sigh of relief when they allowed her to leave.
Accompanied by forensic specialists, Fisher and Gilliam inspected the body more closely. Gilliam observed that the decedent not only wore a gold-colored wristwatch, but also a bracelet, ring, and earrings. The presence of jewelry certainly didn't rule out robbery, but it suggested other possible motives for her death and disposal in the desert wash. No purse or identification papers could be found, so she would be categorized as a Jane Doe for the time being.
Scrutinizing the face, almost devoid of flesh, Gilliam thought he could see damage to the skull, especially around the nasal cavity. This injury could possibly be related to the cause of death, perhaps a blunt-force trauma or even a gunshot wound. Of course, it would take a careful autopsy to deal with those issues.
Another interesting fact caught Gilliam's attention. Even though the fingers had been dehydrated, blackened, and shrunken by the sun, the fingernails remained in perfect shape. The neat manicure made a jarring contrast between decayed flesh and the nails still radiating a lifelike glow.
The victim's clothing had been ravaged by weather. What remained appeared to be a tank top and a pink bra, both pushed up high so they encircled the body under her armpits. A pair of shorts, sheer and possibly white, clung to her lower body. Positioning of the pitiful rags could suggest a possible sexual assault.
Detective Fisher took extensive photos of the human remains, the bridge, and the surrounding terrain. Standing on the bridge's shoulder, he tried to decide if the person who had dumped the body had carried it down to the wash or had dropped it from the bridge. Since only the victim's arm protruded from the dark underside, it looked to the detective that someone must have lugged the body down there. Still, Fisher couldn't rule out the possibility that the corpse, perhaps still in rigor mortis, had been dropped the six or eight feet from above, and had tumbled partially under the structure.
Neither investigator could be certain the woman could ever be identified. Yet, the timing of the miraculous discovery, attributable to Allura McGehay's bad luck at getting stuck in the sand, at least left some window of opportunity for identification. In just a few more days of blazing heat, the body and shards of clothing would have been deteriorated beyond any chance of recognition.
Deputy Doug Alexander had already photographed the shoes worn by Robert LaFond and Christopher De Witt to eliminate footprints they had left near the body. Now the sleuths meticulously searched the perimeter for other prints, cigarette butts, or anything that might be related to the victim's death. Several plastic bottles and aluminum cans were collected, bagged, and tagged. The team sifted sand and gravel, looking for possible bullets or fragments. Nothing useful turned up.
After coroner's technicians loaded the corpse into a van for transportation to the coroner's office, Gilliam knew he couldn't yet rest. Amazingly, two other dead female bodies were found in the vicinity that same weekend.
All three victims of savage depravity were transported to the coroner's office. In the case of the Jane Doe found near Daggett, the possibility of identification through fingerprints at first appeared to be zero. But, despite the terrible condition of her leatherlike flesh, one of the specialists decided to try a recently developed method. The Microsil process involves using a pastelike substance that contains silicone to form a cast. Forensic uses for the procedure include lifting fingerprints from difficult surfaces, preparing a three-dimensional replica of a human bite mark in flesh, and to cast prints from fingers that have been subjected to advanced decomposition. Incredibly, it worked. A set of fingerprints, even if imperfect, at least offered a chance for an opening gambit in solving a sad riddle of probable murder.
C
HAPTER
4
“I'
LL
N
EVER
F
ORGET
T
HAT
D
AY
”
The mysterious discovery of an unidentified female body in the desert near Daggett would eventually have a profound impact on the lives of two dynamic women in Hollywood. Detective Vicki Bynum and her supervisor, Detective Wendi Berndt, veteran members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), worked at one of the most well-known police headquarters in the country, the historic Hollywood Station. Vicki Bynum, gentle and soft-spoken with a hint of mirth constantly in her blue eyes, had started as a patrol officer in 1989. Her veteran supervisor, Wendi Berndt, articulate and captivating, would bring to classic film buffs' minds the remarkable actor-director Ida Lupino. Berndt had been in the Hollywood Station twenty-six of her twenty-eight years as a cop. Both of the bright and impressive women maintained their femininity while keeping an equal footing with thick-skinned male colleagues.
Another former LAPD officer, famed author Joseph Wambaugh, has used the Hollywood Station as a venue for numerous action-packed novels. He also immortalized it with his first true-crime book,
The Onion Field,
in which he chronicled the 1963 murder of Officer Ian Campbell. Visitors to the building cannot fail to notice seven prominent star shapes decorating the entrance pavement. They are cast in the same style as the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which features more than 2,400 pink terrazzo stars embedded in darker-colored sidewalks along the streets of Tinseltown, each one containing the name of a celebrity. The seven stars at the LAPD station memorialize officers who died in the line of duty, including Ian Campbell.
In two of his recent books,
Hollywood Station
and
Hollywood Moon,
Wambaugh acknowledges Vicki Bynum and Wendi Berndt as sources of information. The author expertly weaves real-life places, people, and events into both works of fiction. The title
Hollywood Moon
refers to bizarre events and crimes that occur when a full moon illuminates the entertainment capital.
One of Wambaugh's fictional cops in
Hollywood Moon
describes to his colleagues a hideous double murder that ranked among the weirdest in the station's history. It proved that bloodcurdling events can occur even when the glowing orb above is only half covered by Planet Earth's shadow. The perpetrator, the narrator states, entered the house of a ninety-one-year-old retired screenwriter and “cut the guy's head off” with a meat cleaver. The victim had been a blacklisted screenwriter who coauthored a movie called
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein.
According to Wambaugh's fictional detective, the killer then carried the head to a house next door, broke in, and murdered the occupant: a sixty-nine-year-old retired and recently married doctor.
If readers think this gruesome scenario came from the author's imagination, they underestimate the sometimes insidious nature of Hollywood. The stunning crime actually occurred in June 2004. And Wambaugh's character does not mention that Vicki Bynum was one of the investigators!
In real life, the murdered screenwriter, Robert Lees, had worked as a minor actor at the beginning of his career. He appeared as a bellboy in the 1932 classic
Grand Hotel,
starring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, and Joan Crawford. The next year, Lees showed up as a dancer in another Crawford film,
Dancing Lady,
costarring Clark Gable.
Unable to break out as an actor, Lees turned to screenwriting and achieved notable success. Between 1935 and 1952, he helped create scripts for thirty-seven films, including two comedies starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Afterward, he penned scores of television episodes. Unfortunately, Lees faced the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the McCarthy era of witch-hunting for Communists in the early 1950s. Lees invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, and found himself on an extensive roster of blacklisted writers. He continued to work under the pen name of J. E. Selby.
Long after his retirement, and the 1982 death of his wife, Lees lived peacefully in his Hollywood bungalow. On the other side of a fence, at the back of his property, lived a retired doctor, Morley Engelson.
In early June 2004, former U.S. Marine Keven Graff, age twenty-seven, wandered aimlessly along Selma Avenue after dark. Dirty, shoulder-length brown hair curled over his ears and forehead, and a three-day growth of beard shadowed his wide jaws. Graff came to Courtney Avenue, crossed over it, and entered Robert Lees's yard. Convicted just a month earlier of gross lewdness in Las Vegas, Nevada, along with petty theft, resisting arrest, and possession of drugs, Graff had been released on bail. He drove his pickup to Hollywood, where he found solace in using methamphetamine and shouting quotes from the Bible to anyone who would listen.
Graff broke into the retired screenwriter's house, snatched a meat cleaver and a butcher knife in the kitchen, and cornered Lees in a bedroom. No one but the killer knows why he carried out the incredibly savage attack. Using the sharp instruments, he beheaded the elderly victim, sliced his penis off, and carved out his heart. Graff grabbed a belt and ran it through the severed head's mouth until the large buckle lodged against the lips and teeth. He looped it through the throat opening, making an improvised carrying strap. Holding his bloody prize, along with the knife and cleaver, Graff exited the house, crossed the backyard, and vaulted over the wooden fence. He landed in Morley Engelson's property.
The retired doctor didn't hear Graff silently climb through an open window. Having telephoned Southwest Airlines to make reservations for a planned trip with his recent bride, Engelson devoted his attention to the conversation. His wife was out at that time.
On the other end of the line, the agent was in the middle of routinely explaining flight arrangements when she heard screaming and the sounds of a scuffle. She immediately called the LAPD (from her Arizona workplace) and Hollywood officers were dispatched to the house. Upon their arrival, they found an open window.
Inside, the officers discovered Engelson's nearly nude body, dressed only in white socks and a gray sweatshirt pulled up to his neck. An attempt had been made to behead and emasculate him too. It would be later theorized that the killer had heard noises outside and left before he could complete the job.
In another bedroom, investigators recoiled at a stunning sight. On the corner of a soft white comforter, neatly covering a king-sized bed, reposed the bloodied head of Robert Lees! A round belt buckle with a raised black-and-red five-point star covered the mouth, while the leather belt extended from the throat and onto the white fabric. One of the eyes had been gouged out. Few people have ever witnessed a more sickening vision. Not even a Quentin Tarantino film would have gone this far.
At about the same time as the excruciating discovery, a woman who had tried unsuccessfully to call Lees showed up at his house and nearly fainted upon seeing his mutilated body.
Every detail of the macabre event had been permanently etched in the mind of Detective Vicki Bynum, even though she has wished she could use a delete key to cleanse her memory.
“I'll never forget that day,” she said with a grimace. “I think it was Sunday—a beautiful day. Got the call to come in and meet with Liz, another detective, who now works cold cases. We were briefed by officers, who were really creeped out. At least we had the luxury of knowing they had already gone through the house and made sure no suspect was in there. We learned the victim had been on the phone making reservations with Southwest Airlines. He and his wife were going on a trip. She, thank God, had gone out shopping. All the windows were open, and none of them had screens. The house is a lovely old bungalow type, on the west side of our division. Dr. Engelson had been playing classical music while talking on the phone.
“Fortunately, the airline agent had already taken down his address and phone number. The psycho comes from the house where he had decapitated the first victim, and carried the head with him like a purse. He crawled through Dr. Engelson's window while carrying that head. This poor guy is on the phone, sees this grisly sight, and gets attacked. The Southwest agent hears it and calls the police. Officers respond. There is blood outside. They look through the window and see someone lying on the hardwood floor. I get there and they are explaining this to us. We went in, very gingerly. I remember the first victim, a neighbor, had been mutilated. His penis had been severed and it was lying next to him. The assailant had also used a fireplace poker to stab him. The whole scene was as gruesome as it gets. So, in Engelson's house, Liz and I are going through it and we get to a back bedroom. Officers on the scene hadn't warned us. We are like, ‘What is that on the bed?' We get closer and it's the head of the previous victim, with the belt buckle, like a star shape, pulled tight against the mouth.” At that moment, Bynum wondered if she really wanted to stick with the job.
Keven Graff had stolen Engelson's car and driven to Hollywood Boulevard, where he abandoned it. Investigators found ample fingerprints at both crime scenes and they expedited computer identification. Within hours they started searching for Graff. LAPD chief William Bratton arranged for the suspect's photo to appear on several local television stations. On Monday afternoon, an alert guard spotted him just outside the famous gate of Paramount Studios and called the police.
It took four years to bring Graff to justice. In April 2008, he pled guilty to double murder and was sentenced to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors welcomed the plea, concerned that a jury could have believed Graff's attorney, who asserted that his client was “very, very mentally ill.”
 
 
Vicki Bynum had never even considered a law enforcement career while growing up. She wound up with the LAPD almost by accident.
A native of San Antonio, Texas, she and her two younger brothers traveled extensively as children. Their father, a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, moved approximately every three years, from one military base to another. Vicki regretted being unable to remember their time in Europe, and the birth of her first brother in Paris, but she couldn't be expected to since those events occurred between her third and fifth birthdays.
A third brother arrived after the family landed in Wichita, Kansas. While he still wore diapers, the next assignment took them to Tampa, Florida. “My parents bought a beautiful home there, close to the beach, for about thirty thousand dollars.” She loved it, but hated the absence of her dad while he served in Vietnam. “When he came home, they transferred him to North Dakota. It was horrible. And they made an awful mistake by selling the Florida home.” The property's value today would exceed a million dollars.
She attended three years at Red River High School in Grand Forks, and nearly froze to death. Before Vicki's senior year, her father decided to retire from the military and move to Danville, Illinois, the state where he and his wife had been born. “It was basically just a little cow town,” says Vicki. “Not much to do except drive around the cornfields and have a drinkfest now and then.” She graduated from Danville High School, which had originally opened in 1870 and counted among its alumni actors Gene Hackman, Dick Van Dyke, and Jerry Van Dyke.
Vicki chose Southern Illinois University (SIU) to continue her education. She laughed when she recalled that the sports teams were known as the “Salukis,” a name chosen in 1951, after the dog breed that enjoyed royalty status in ancient Egypt. Not yet certain what profession she wanted to enter, Vicki majored in education. “I thought about being a teacher, but spent way too much time having fun in those first two years. I quit school and on a whim went with two friends to Tucson, Arizona, with the intention of completing my education. I had lived there once when my dad was stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. But my school plans didn't work out.”
A few months later, she returned to SIU, changed her major to recreation therapy, and graduated in 1979. “My goal was to work with special populations—handicapped people or veterans. But when applying for jobs, I saw a lot of raised eyebrows, like ‘recreation therapy?' There didn't seem to be a huge demand for that specialty.”
Not long after receiving her degree, Vicki moved to California. “I had a boyfriend at the time and he came out here to Los Angeles. Like most stupid young girls, I followed my heart and came to L.A. The second I got here, I found that he had already discovered the beach littered with countless beautiful women. He lost interest in this little Saluki. But that was okay. Everything happens for a reason, and I always try to turn a negative into a positive.”

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