“What time was this taking place?”
“About nine thirty.”
“So all of this took place in about a forty-five-minute time span?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So, did you find out if he was upstairs or had really gone somewhere?”
“At first, I wasn't sure. I called him again about ten minutes later and asked him if he had actually left. He said he had. I asked him, âAre you serious? You shot her and then you just ran away?' He started twisting things around, like accusing me of arguing with her, trying to imply, like you know, pinning it on me.”
Now, Donnie said, he was really confused. “So what I did is go upstairs andâI was freaking out. I didn't know whatâI had to see what was going on. I got up there and rang the bell, wondering again if he was actually at his own place. But nobody answers. So I went aroundâyou can go around the side where the garbage cans are and it's his garage window. I can go over the railing and the window was open, and I can step from the railing up through that window. When I got into the garage, I could see one of his Jaguars was gone, and I started thinking he told me the truth.”
Inside the house, said Donnie, he made his way to the bedroom door. “I knocked and waited, but nobody answered. After I did it again, and heard nothing, I opened the door to his room. I didn't see anybody. The lights were off. Then I looked down and seen the bedspread laying on the floor. At first, I didn't think much about it, but I took a closer look. And, wow, it looked like something was under there.
“I didn't actually go in the room, but leaned over a little farther, and at the very top, I could see her hand. There was her hand sticking out. Andâoh, my God, I got sick to my stomach. I justâI justâstood there about thirty seconds, and the hand wasn't moving, never moved. The bedspread was over the rest of her body. I knew right then that he really did kill her.”
Vicki Bynum had listened carefully to the part about David Mahler suggesting that Kristin had attacked him with a knife. She asked Donnie, “Did you see any knife in the room?”
“No.”
“Did you see a knife anywhere near her hand?”
“No, there was no knife.”
“When you were talking to her earlier, was there any knife in sight, anywhere in the room?”
“No, no. There was no knife. That was a lie. I just didn'tâdidn't believe him when he said the girl attacked him with a knife and it was self-defense.”
Tom Small inquired, “Did you pull the bedspread back and look at her?”
A horrified expression creased Donnie's face. “No, absolutely not. I ... no way I could do that. I didn't. I got sick to my stomach. I was in shock.”
Donnie's wife returned home late Sunday night, he said, and he couldn't bring himself to tell her what had happened. “I've been in shock for the last few days. My wife doesn't even know what's wrong with me. She knows something is up, but I haven't told her, just for her own safety. I don't know what to do.”
“So what did you do when you left that bedroom?”
“I went back to my own apartment to have a cigarette and I heard Karl go out on his balcony above me. I go out on my balcony and I can see him up there. I go, âKarl, Karl,' and he comes and looks over his railing down at me. I go, âListen, man, something terrible has happened. David has just shot and killed a girl.' I'm saying it quietly. He's like, âWhat?' I go, âHe shot and killed a girl in his room.' He goes, âAll right, come on up.'”
Donnie spoke of joining Karl in his room. They shared some vodka to ease their ragged nerves while Donnie told Norvik the details of what he had seen and suggested they call the police. “He goes, âI've known this guy a long time and he's scary. Considering the way he does things, going to the police is not the thing to do.' So I asked him, âThen what are we going to do? There's a dead body, you know.' He started trying to make out some story to keep us out of it. I go back downstairs 'cause he was drinking and maybe not thinking straight. But pretty soon, he starts kicking on the floor above me, and asked me to come back up there.”
Back in his neighbor's room, said Donnie, Norvik admitted already knowing about the killing. “Karl said, âHe shot her in the face.' I go, âWhat? You knew?' He said, “Yeah, I already knew, before you did.'” According to Donnie, David Mahler had telephoned Norvik immediately after the shooting and admitted doing it. Norvik had gone up to Donnie's bedroom door and actually looked at the corpse.
Tom Small and Vicki Bynum wanted clarification, and Donnie Van Develde did his best. From his statements, it appeared that Karl Norvik had been summoned upstairs within a couple of minutes after Donnie heard the gunshot, and had seen Kristin's body before it was covered up. The shroud, placed after Norvik returned to his room, had left only a hand exposed, the one Donnie had seen.
Donnie repeated Norvik's words: “I saw the corpse shot right through the face. Shot in cold blood. Dead.”
Donnie described his own reaction to that admission. “I just threw up. I threw my guts up.”
Asked by the detectives what he did next, Donnie said he ran back to his apartment and tried to telephone his wife to prevent her from coming home and getting involved in the horror, and to protect her. “I'm scared for my life. I'm scared for my wife's life.”
C
HAPTER
13
B
LOOD
âB
UT
N
O
B
ODY
While Detectives Bynum and Small conducted the interviews, other officers and technicians, under the direction of Supervisor Wendi Berndt, intensified the investigation.
The sun still hadn't peeked over the eastern summit of the Hollywood Hills on June 1 when Berndt contacted the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office to ask if any unidentified bodiesâJane Doesâhad been discovered in the last few days. A lieutenant checked the log and replied that no extant bodies bore the slightest resemblance to the information Berndt had given.
She made more calls to the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) Missing Persons Units, but no reports turned up in correlation to this incident.
At the house on Cole Crest Drive, forensic experts meticulously examined every room in search of evidence related to the alleged shooting of a woman. Wendi Berndt later recalled, “We went through the entire house in search of a hidden body. I wondered if it might be buried down in the canyon somewhere. So we brought in a cadaver dog, but it didn't help. That was the important thing, to find out whether or not the victim was still there.”
Bill Wilson, one of the officers among the team that had first arrived and had been invited inside by Jeremy Moudy, had spotted what appeared to be bloodstains leading to and inside the garage.
Other investigators had noted an assortment of cleaning fluids, along with sponges and scrubbing pads, in the master bedroom, on the fireplace mantel, and on the floor. It didn't take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that someone had been trying desperately to clean the place, probably in an effort to eradicate blood.
LAPD criminalist Wubayehu Tsega answered Berndt's summons to help with the investigation. Tsega's colleagues had trouble pronouncing the Ethiopian native's name, but he took it with good humor. His eight years of experience on the job had earned respect from peers and the brass as well. Along with another criminalist, Raphael Garcia, he arrived at Cole Crest shortly after noon and began collecting samples of “biological fluids.” According to Tsega, this could include saliva, semen, perspiration, urine, or any other fluid from the human bodyâbut in this case, it meant primarily blood.
Beginning in the garage, Tsega inspected the areas around two Jaguar convertibles. One of them, a new 2007 XK model, indigo blue, was parked on the far side. Detective Cameron had already checked the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records for both cars. The XK had been registered in the name of David Mahler. The other, a black 1999 XK8, sat close to the door leading into the house. It surprised the detective to learn that it was registered to David Gold, not Mahler. This would later be cleared up by Mahler's sister, who explained that he sometimes conducted business under the “David Gold” alias. But she didn't say why.
Tsega had been advised of blood spots on the garage floor and on the 1999 Jaguar. He traced the sanguine trail all the way from the master bedroom, up two short landings of stairs, and into the garage. The droplets ended within a few feet of the side entry door.
Checking reports of blood on the Jaguar's rear bumper and trunk lid, Tsega meticulously used cotton swabs, similar to Q-tips, to moisten the stains and lift samples. He opened the trunk lid and found more stains that appeared to be blood. In addition to collecting those samples, he made tape lifts of the trunk carpeting and the car's interior to collect any possible hair or other clues of a body having been transported.
To the investigators, it appeared that a body had been carried and dragged from the bedroom, up the short staircases, and into the garage. Because the trail stopped just inside the side entry door, it looked like the Jaguar may have been backed into the garage and the body loaded into the trunk. It may have been wrapped in the bedspread shroud to prevent leaving hair or secretions in the trunk.
Carefully packaging and marking the collected specimens, Tsega placed the evidence in an ice chest for transportation to the LAPD Scientific Investigation Division (SID).
In Mahler's bedroom, the bright red wall-to-wall carpeting at first just appeared to be dirty, as if it hadn't been vacuumed in a long time. But closer inspection by Tsega and Garcia revealed that an amazing volume of blood had soaked the carpet. They cut sections of it, peeled them back, and revealed signs of soaking all the way through to the padding underneath. If someone had suffered a gunshot wound in that room, as two witnesses had reported, the victim must have completely bled out. The logical inference would lead the investigators to believe the body must have been on that floor for many hours.
Wendi Berndt remained at the house to supervise and assure nothing would be overlooked. Following Berndt's instructions, one member of the team began photographing the scene and each item of potential evidence. He took a shot of Wubayehu Tsega inspecting the 1999 Jaguar's rear bumper and the blood spot on it. In the bedroom, the photographer captured images of the unmade bed, cluttered floor, various bottles of cleaning liquids near the fireplace, discolorations on the red carpet, and the sliced-up sections that revealed massive bloodstains.
Later commenting on the search inside Cole Crest, Berndt said, “Once I walked through, I had no doubt this was a crime scene. Based on the blood and the initial witness statements, I was convinced we had a murder. Karl Norvik had said he saw a body and knew that David Mahler shot her. Also, Norvik and Donnie Develde had spoken of Mahler wanting help to get rid of a body. The blood evidence backed it all up. In my mind, a woman had been murdered. I just didn't know where the body was. I believed we had to handle it as a worst-case scenario.”
Another team of search dogs showed up, requested by Berndt. A cadaver dog from the coroner's office had found nothing. This pair, from the downtown L.A. Metro Division, handled by Officers Miller and Almarez, sniffed through the entire house, looking for guns. They had no better luck than the earlier four-legged detective.
Shortly after lunch, Wendi Berndt stepped outside, in front of the garage door, and glanced over at the neighboring house on the west side. She spotted something that could have important repercussions. Berndt later said, “Up in that area, with a lot of the higher-end houses of the Hollywood Hills, many homes have security video cameras mounted outside. They enable the resident to see what's going on without going out to personally check. That's one of the things we always look for. And this camera was right under the overhanging eave, in plain sight.”
Along with one of the detectives, Berndt pushed the neighbor's doorbell button. The occupant spoke to them over a speaker system. “The guy wouldn't let anybody in. We explained to him that we were investigating a crime, and needed to know if his security video camera had recorded any activity at the Mahler house.” The neighbor acknowledged that his system operated 24-7, and that he would make the tapes available to the police. But he insisted that he would have his own technician upload them from a central computer.
Berndt later commented, “He was very secretive. I almost think he had a sex thing going on there. He wouldn't let us come in or look at anything. We didn't have a warrant, so we had to go along with his wishes. He did come through, though. His technician came out at about two o'clock that afternoon. He even gave us the hard drive.” Berndt sent the apparatus to the crime scene investigation (CSI) lab to see if anything useful had been recorded.
C
HAPTER
14
“I B
ELIEVED
I W
AS
A
D
EAD
M
AN
”
Inside the tiny interview room, still an hour before dawn, Vicki Bynum and Tom Small listened as Donnie Van Develde provided more frenetic answers to their questions. Still shaking and spurting his words, he said, “David scared the hell out of me. From what I've seenâand the characters he associates withâand him telling me things likeâlike that he hired this guy to kidnapâto grab this Cheryl out of her work andâlike a bounty hunter or some crap like thatâand he was just a psycho over this other chick.”
Once again trying to drag an orderly statement from Donnie, Small asked, “After you talked with Karl Norvik, did you remain in the house?”
“Yeah, yeah. I didn't know what else to do.” Donnie said the presence of his wife intensified the problems. “I said to her, âI can't explain, but there's some bad, bad, bad things going on.' And she just assumed that I had got myself mixed up in something stupid, you knowâbecause she always thinks I'mâshe thinks I'm an idiot. She started screaming at me and yelling at me that she and her girlfriend were going out. And I just needed to stay there, 'cause Karl had told me to sit tight.”
“Karl advised you to stay there?”
“Oh yeahâdon't do anything. I said, âDon't we got to call the police? David said it was self-defense.' But then I seen after another day or two goes by, there's no police coming, that obviously that's not whatâyou know? And I knew that (self-defense) was a bullshit story, anyway. Obviously, he's an attorney and knew how to handle it in a different way.”
Small asked, “Okay, so you remain in the house and your wife comes home. Did you tell her anything at all about what you saw?”
“No. No, no. All I told her was that Dave is off the handle, and I'm really worried aboutâ”
“You didn't tell her about seeing a dead girl up in Mahler's room?”
“No, no. I couldn't tell her that. I ended up having a screaming fight with her. She knew something was up and kept at me about it. âAre you guys partying?' I said, âNo, I'm not partying with him. I'm just trying ...' That's my relationship with my wife. It's really stressful. She's just constantly on me, but in any case we were having a screaming match, 'cause she just wouldn't stop. I kept telling her maybe she should just go stay with her girlfriend because David was off the deep end.”
To the detectives, it didn't make sense that Van Develde wouldn't tell his wife what had happened. It might convince her of the potential danger to both of them. Small put the question to him.
Donnie tried to explain. “Iâif you knew her, nothing ugly like this has ever been in her life. You know? I'm the ugliest thing that she's ever known. I don't want her to beâshe would just instantly freak out. She'd be scared to death. I've been a wreck all week.”
Still skeptical, Small inquired again why Van Develde neither told his wife nor called the police. Donnie, clearly embarrassed, replied, “It's justâthis is the most screwed-up thing I've ever been dealt in my whole life. I wanted to protect my wife. I know David. From what I've seen, and from what Karl told me, I would think David would think nothing of eliminating any witness or anything like that.”
“Why did you remain in the house the whole time?”
“I have nowhere else to go. I don't really have much family anymore. I don't have any friends I can stay with. The only people I know out here have wives, and stuff like that. They live in little places. I don't have anywhere else to go.”
“And your wife still doesn't know what happened?”
“All she knows is that something bad is up. Just before she went out tonight, Karl called me and said, âListen, we got to call the police. I'm going to call them.' I asked him if he was sure. He said, like, yes, absolutely. He had talked to a lawyer. And he said David had called him to say he was leavingâthat he was moving out. He's going to be taking off.”
“Is that all he said?”
“No. He said, âIf I was you, I'd vamoose. I'd get the hell out [of] there because shit's going to be going down. I'm calling the police tonight.'”
“Have you seen David at all after the event up there in his room?”
“No, I have not seen him since then.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“He called me the next day and asked me, âWhat's up? How is she doing?' I said, âDavid, what the fuck, man?' Excuse my language. I asked him where he was and what he was going to do. But he put some other guy on the phone for a few seconds. He just said, âHi, Donnie' in a real weird voice.”
In hesitant, sputtering, disjointed words, Van Develde expressed the opinion that David Mahler intended, by putting someone else on the phone, to send a warning, a mortal threat not to speak of the event, or to call the police. “The actual words weren't said, but I know he meant that if I said anything, I was a dead manâthat he had hired someone to protect him and to take care of anyone who threatened him.”
“All right,” said Small. “Now, the whole time, from Sunday until this morning, as far as you know, that body had been lying up there? Or is that body out of there?”
“No. I have no idea. I assumed that David had handled it, or something. Karl implied something about him having it taken care of, or whatever. It's been freaking me out. I didn't smell anything andâoh God! It's really the most unbelievableâI can't even believe it's real.”
Answering a few more questions, Van Develde launched another rambling account of meeting someone David had brought to the house several days before the shooting. The individual had been introduced as “the cleaner.” This had confused Donnie. “A cleaner? What the hell is a âcleaner'? I'm a cleaner too. I'm cleaning the walls and railings, you know? That's really been messing with my mind.” He had finally decided that this person must be a hit man.
On that theme, Donnie wondered, “Did David plan to kill somebody? Maybe there was someone else he needed to get rid of. David told me he had guns, and that scared me. He said he had three of them, including a rifle. I never seen any of them, except the one he was waving in my face.”
“You say Mahler told you he was a lawyer?”
“Yeah. He told me the other day that he represented a guy that ran over someone with his car, then backed over him again and killed him, and then robbed him. David said he got the guy off with only three days in jail. And that made me sick too.”
“When he was up there, waving that gun around and pointing it at you and the woman, you said he was wearing a bathrobe?”
“Yes.”
“What color was it?”
“White, and it had monograms on it. Like the kind you see at hotels.”
Spinning off again on a tangent, and unaware that Mahler occupied a cell on another floor of the Hollywood Station, Van Develde said, “This isn't right. David shouldn't be walking around the streets. I don't think he is at all remorseful. I think he's out getting high and staying in nice hotels, getting girls.”
Pulling him back to answer specific questions, Small heard Donnie speak of Atticus King, the green-and-white taxi, and King's frequent visits to Cole Crest, in which he brought prostitutes.
Nearly ready to conclude the interview, Bynum needed to inquire about one more subject. “I need to ask you something. Don't be offended. Please be honest. Have you ever been arrested?”
“Yeah, a couple of times for little minor things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I got arrested for crystal meth.”
“Okay. So, do you still use drugs?”
“Not regularly. I got off methadone this year. I'm on medication called Suboxone.”
“Did you ever get high with David?”
“I did one line of crystal meth with him, once. He really didn't share his drugs.”
Bynum explained, “We know this is traumatic for you, but we're just trying to understand why you never called the police about a murder. If you were getting high with him, and that made you feel a certain loyalty, you need to be honest with us about it.”
“No, that's not it at all. I have noâno loyalty or anything to David. I'm just purely afraid of him. I'm not his friend. He's not my friend, you know.”
Bynum probed another sensitive area. “Are you afraid your wife is going to leave you? Were you trying to avoid that by placating her and not telling what you were doing with David?”
Wildly shaking his head in the negative, Donnie Van Develde said, “No. It is getting pretty roughâour relationship, with me being in the music business and not making a lot of money right now. And she's not very happy. But I just didn't want her to know about what David did, so she wouldn't be afraid.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Six years. I met her on the road when my group was opening for a band called Poison. We had some moderate success, but we've also had a lot of tough breaks.”
“How long have you lived in David's place?”
“About a year and a half.”
The two detectives thanked Van Develde for his cooperation and started to rise. He felt the need to explain his reluctance to notify anyone after the shooting. “I meanâI swear to God, I would have comeâI would have called the police right away, immediately, except for the fact that I've been under the impression that I'm a dead man if I did that. I thought I was just protecting my wife and myself.”
“Did you not have faith in the police helping to protect you?”
“From what I was told by Karl, that wouldn't matter. David would find a way to get revenge.”
Bynum sat back down and said, “Hey, Donnie, real quick. Help me describe the female victim better. What length is her hair?”
“Shoulder length.”
“Okay,” said Bynum sweetly. “Listenâand you won't offend meâI'm five-four. Is she my height, you think?”
Donnie nodded an “uh-huh.”
“And I'm not as thin as I used to be. Is she thinner than me?”
“She was very thin. I'd say she weighed maybe one hundred fifteen pounds.”
“How about eye color? And her hair was blond?”
“I don't remember the color of her eyes, but her hair was lighter than yours, kinda streaked blond. My wife thought she was really pretty.” He said he couldn't remember any jewelry she might have worn.
At last, after spending more than two hours with Donnie Van Develde, Detectives Bynum and Small allowed him to leave.
They called a uniformed officer to bring David Mahler from the tank.