by Don Lasseter
“Did someone actually cover up the spots in the bedroom?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But there was no attempt to cover up the blood spots on the stairs or in the garage or anything like that, was there?”
“Again, sir, suspects, thank goodness, often miss small details that we, as detectives, find.”
Larry Young, an intelligent and effective lawyer, appeared to be underestimating the witness’s ability to debate a point. “But often when they’re thinking clearly, they don’t miss it, do they?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that at all, sir.”
A note of incredulity tinged Young’s voice. “You don’t?”
“No, I would not say that at all.”
Persistent, Young asked, “If a person was thinking clearly, he wouldn’t be more careful, more exact, more precise?”
Berndt held her ground. “You would think, under those conditions, that might be true. But the problem is that people do make mistakes even if they’re trying to be very methodical. It’s just a fact of life that they make mistakes. When murders occur, mistakes are made trying to cover it up.”
“The sloppiness doesn’t mean anything then, in your opinion?”
“I’m not sure I know what you think it should mean, sir, and I apologize for that.”
In the gallery, observers leaned forward so as not to miss a single word of this clinic in how to testify. Young shot back, “Well, I was trying to see if you agree that it would show a lack of a clear mind, a lack of—”
Cutting him off, Berndt continued in her sprightly dissection. “Oh, I think there was a lot of clarity in this, in the fact that the perpetrator was trying to clean up the crime scene after the fact. This shows definitely a consciousness of guilt... .”
“A consciousness of ... ?”
“... in trying to cover up the crime.”
Young’s expression indicated a heightened respect for this detective’s logic. Still, he needed to keep his theme on track. He countered, “But not in any intelligent manner, though, was it? I mean, the person leaves a blood trail going downstairs, upstairs, into a garage. I call it sloppy, and you just say it’s a mistake?”
Cool and confident, Berndt pressed her own theme. “I’d say that people make mistakes when they commit murders. And they don’t always see the minute details that we, as detectives, later see. It could be lighting. It could be the color of the carpet. It could be the hurriedness of somebody’s movements that they fail to give attention to. So there are a lot of reasons why a suspect wouldn’t see what we see.”
Circumventing the issue, Young said, “You’ve classified it in your mind as a murder. But you understand that’s for the jury to decide, don’t you?”
“Well, sir, I classified it in my own mind. Yes, sir. In my mind, this is a murder, sir.”
“Did you investigate the circumstances of the shooting?”
“I investigated the crime scene and the available evidence about the incident.”
“Well—the shooting, how did the incident happen?”
“If you are trying to see if I was an eyewitness ... no, I was not an eyewitness. I was a supervisor who overviewed the investigation. In that overview, I was aware of a lot of witness’s statements. I was aware of what the criminalists found. I was aware of what the coroner found. And that’s what I base my personal opinion on.”
“Without talking to anyone who was there?”
“Well, again, sir, there were witnesses at the location who were interviewed by my detectives. And I’m very familiar with their statements.”
Young wanted specifics. “Did Mr. Donnie Van Develde explain what happened?”
Bobby Grace had listened with fascination to the testimony that turned into a debate, and skipped several opportunities to object. But he finally protested. “Your Honor, I’m going to object on the grounds of hearsay.”
“Sustained.”
Young quickly shifted gears. “Was there any attempt by your officers to prevent other people from entering the scene?” Perhaps he hoped to imply that evidence had been contaminated by outsiders.
Berndt was ready for this too. “When the officers went there and cleared the location, they secured it until we got a search warrant and returned to conduct the search.”
“Was there any yellow crime scene tape put around there, blocking off sections of the house?”
“The crime scene photos would probably show that. If you mean sections inside the house, the answer is no, because it was secured from the outside.”
“Did the officers go into an office that was in the location?”
“I wasn’t there when the initial searchers went through the residence to clear it. And so I’m not sure where the officers went when they did clear the location prior to securing it.” At last, Larry Young had exploited a tiny chink in this remarkable detective’s armor.
“Are you aware of whether any drugs were found in the bedroom?”
Berndt had an immediate, unequivocal answer. “In our search after it was secured, there were no drugs found in the residence.”
Hoping to exploit any possible oversights in the search, Young asked, “Was there any attempt to prevent personal belongings and electronic equipment from being stolen out of the residence?”
Bobby Grace thought this went too far afield and objected on the grounds of relevance. Judge Wesley sustained it.
Larry Young stepped over to the defense table, picked up some papers, returned, and said with a new air of confidence, “Did you say there was no evidence of drugs in the residence?”
“That’s correct.”
“Would it refresh your memory if I showed you a property report from the Los Angeles Police Department of the house on Cole Crest Drive purporting to show—”
Judge Wesley interceded. “Don’t tell us what it purports to show. If you are going to refresh her memory, show her the document.”
Berndt studied the paper and started to say, “Sir, this is a search warrant of a different—”
Judge Wesley quickly stopped her too. “If that doesn’t refresh your memory, just give it back to him and tell him it did not refresh your memory.”
Sounding feisty, Berndt retorted, “It does refresh my memory, but he’s incorrect.”
“All right, then,” Wesley patiently advised, “that’s fine. Let him ask the question.”
Now alarmed, Young said, “If I got the wrong report, tell me why this is wrong.”
Berndt replied, “You do have the wrong report. That’s a search warrant for a different location, sir.”
Sounding chastised, Young uttered, “Not at the Mahler residence on Cole Crest?”
“No, sir. If you will read the report, further down it will tell you the location of the occurrence. It’s about the middle of the page, sir.”
“Oh,” said Young, “down on Clark Drive.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
All of the gusto had left Larry Young. Ironically, he had proven that even intelligent, well-prepared experts in their profession can make mistakes, as Wendi Berndt had stated. He could manage only, “I apologize. Did you search the office?”
Avoiding a display of triumph, Berndt replied, “Yes, I did.”
“Just to be clear, I meant Mahler’s office inside the house. Was anything removed by you or your officers from that room?”
The witness thought for a few moments and then answered, “My recollection, there may have been a letter on top of the desk, I believe, and some business cards. Because of Mr. Mahler’s occupation (as a lawyer or broker), I was very aware of trying to not invade any personal files that could relate to his business. So I was not looking through paperwork or files. I was basically looking for evidence of blood or any other evidence of the crime.”
“Thank you,” Young said. “I have nothing further.”
Judge Wesley excused Detective Wendi Berndt, who walked out through a gallery of new admirers for her remarkable professionalism and skill at fieldin
g questions in a court of law.
Bobby Grace later expressed his admiration of Detective Berndt. “In terms of evidence collection and her presentation on the stand, she was one of the best witnesses I have ever seen testify in court. I’ve handled over fifty murder cases. Sometimes supervisors don’t really have a detailed grasp of the events, but her attention to detail and knowledge of where everything was, and how the scientific aspects related, was extraordinary. Many detectives don’t pay enough attention to the SID people to know what to say and what not to say on the stand—why certain things are important in terms of the scientific aspects. They can recite where evidence was found, but unless you can talk about it in terms of what conclusions may be drawn, they don’t give a complete picture. Wendi made it clear the victim’s head was dragged—where many investigators would have just said she was dragged. Some detectives don’t get that they can testify to the logical flow of evidence. The way she framed it let the jury understand conclusions of what could have happened. She was so effective in her court presentation, and you can’t put a price on the value of having a witness who is knowledgeable and comes off so well in front of a jury.”
Grace made it a point to also compliment Ron Bowers’s graphics. “Ron’s diagrams helped Wendi too. We could take the victim all the way from the bedroom into the garage to the point where the jury could see blood droplets in the garage and on the car. This led to the inescapable conclusion that the victim was dragged all that way and placed in the Jaguar luggage compartment.”
The de facto jurors in the gallery agreed that, so far, the evidence strongly pointed to David Mahler’s culpability. He had obviously killed Kristin Baldwin. But defense attorney Larry Young had made significant headway in portraying his client as a drug-addicted, temperamental alcoholic whose erratic volatility could indicate symptoms of bipolar disorder. The jury might very well decide that he could not be held responsible for his actions. If so, they could find him not guilty, or come back with a guilty verdict of manslaughter.
CHAPTER 36
ANOTHER TRIP TO DAGGETT
Jurors next heard from criminalists Raphael Garcia and Wubayehu Tsega, who had worked together collecting the bloodstains Wendi Berndt had discussed. Color photos on the big screen and the use of a laser pointer made their testimony crystal clear.
On cross-examination Larry Young said to Tsega, “You have a wonderful accent, sir. What country were you originally from?”
“I am from Ethiopia.”
“Did you do any lifting of prints or stains—tape lifting on any of the cleaning material or plastic bags found in the bedroom of the residence?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Is it correct that you recall the tape lifts and the cotton swabs from the automobile?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Now, there were two automobiles, were there not?”
“Yes, there were.”
“Did you do the other one also?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Were you asked to do any examination of a trunk of a green taxicab?”
“No.”
Young had no further questions. He had apparently been attempting to plant a kernel of doubt in jurors’ minds by suggesting that fingerprints of someone else could possibly have been found on the cleaning materials. Or, perhaps, that Kristin’s blood might have been inside Atticus King’s green-and-white minivan taxi.
Another uniformed officer from the Hollywood Station, David Kim, spent about twenty minutes delivering testimony about the two Jaguars, using the laser pointer to eliminate any possible confusion jurors might have about which vehicle had made the long trip to the desert in the dark morning hours of May 31, 2007.
The courtroom clock ticked close to five o’clock on that Wednesday evening, and Judge Wesley announced the trial would not resume until Tuesday afternoon, September 8. He wished everyone a happy long weekend for Labor Day.
All murder trials, in which the bodies were found, feature testimony about gory details of the victim’s autopsy, usually from the forensic pathologist who conducted the postmortem surgery and examination. Dr. Louis Pena took the stand at one thirty in the afternoon on Tuesday. A solidly built man, with salt-and-pepper wavy hair, rimless glasses, dressed in a gray suit, with a diagonally striped tie, Pena looked more like a stereotypical senator than a medical specialist.
He spoke of the difficulties in doing an autopsy on a dehydrated and decomposed thirty-one-pound body. Taking the jury through the whole process, he used the pointer to elaborate about inconclusive findings due to badly deteriorated internal and external organs.
One photo depicted the small tattoo of a blue dolphin on Kristin’s lower abdomen. It had helped confirm her identity.
Jurors heard Pena’s opinion that Kristin Baldwin had probably been shot in the upper right chest, rather than the face as indicated by previous testimony from Donnie Van Develde and Karl Norvik. Conradictory evidence from witnesses is not uncommon in murder trials. Which version the jury believed would have to be worked out during deliberations.
While Dr. Pena answered questions from both attorneys, David Mahler busied himself reading while frequently adjusting his glasses with his left hand. He appeared to be making notes on a pad of legal-sized yellow paper.
The testimony concluded with a photo of the bra and stained sheer white pants Kristin had worn.
A slim, dark-haired, handsome investigator for the district attorney’s office replaced Dr. Pena as the next witness. Classic-movie buffs thought Ronald Valdiva bore a strong resemblance to actor Ricardo Montalban, who, in addition to scores of film roles, had starred on television’s Fantasy Island.
After having Valdiva state his name and occupation, Bobby Grace asked, “At my request, did you and one of your colleagues take a drive from Hollywood, California, to Daggett, California?”
In a resonant voice, the witness answered, “Yes ... to Daggett.”
“When did you take that drive?”
“On July ninth, this year.”
“What time did you start?”
“We started at two seventeen A.M. from the Mahler house on Cole Crest Drive in the Hollywood Hills.”
Spectators who had been paying attention to previous testimony realized that the timing corresponded exactly with the security camera video of Mahler’s Jaguar leaving his garage in the early morning of May 31, 2007. A map of their route to Daggett appeared on the large screen.
“What time did you arrive in Daggett?”
“The trip took two hours and four minutes. We got there at four twenty-one A.M.”
“Did you immediately start your return trip?”
“No, not immediately. We delayed about six minutes.” Jurors could be seen taking notes, perhaps observing that six minutes would allow enough time to dump a body in the desert.
“When you returned, how long did the drive take you?”
“The trip back from Daggett to the house on Cole Crest Drive also took two hours and four minutes. We arrived at six thirty-one A.M.” Jurors again put pencils to paper. The Jaguar had been gone nearly five hours on May 31, and Valdiva’s trip had taken four hours and eight minutes.
“What kind of driving speed were you doing?”
“From the Cole Crest address down to the main highway, which is Laurel Canyon—leaving at two seventeen A.M., it was dark, winding, and the roads are narrow, so the speed through that portion was quite slow, no more than twenty miles per hour. On the surface streets, primarily from Laurel Canyon to the 101 Freeway, I maintained a speed of five miles per hour over the posted speed limits. And freeway speeds were seventy miles per hour.” A question might be in the minds of jurors. Had Mahler, carrying a dead body in the trunk, cautiously obeyed the speed limit to avoid being stopped? This would partially account for his trip taking about forty-five minutes more than Valdiva’s.
“Did you encounter much traffic on the way there and back?”
“There was very little traffic on the way out. It
increased on the return trip, but was moving along quite well and did not keep me from being able to maintain my speed. I just had to drive without the cruise control coming back.”
“You spoke of difficult driving conditions between Cole Crest and Laurel Canyon. Does it require some kind of coordination or dexterity in order to make that drive up and down from Cole Crest to Laurel Canyon or the reverse?” (Grace might as well have asked, “Could Mahler have successfully done it if he had been under the influence of alcohol or drugs?”)
Valdiva understood the implication and answered, “Yes, in order to avoid hitting something—yes.”
His testimony ended the court’s session on that Tuesday, September 8.
Wind-fanned flames still swept up hillsides in the Angeles National Forest on Wednesday, September 9, 2009, devouring brush, trees, and wildlife. News reports announced the firestorm only 60 percent under control. Temperatures downtown, though, had dropped to the high 70s.
In Judge David Wesley’s courtroom, another type of storm roiled the proceedings. While the jury waited in their room, a hearing took place to air Larry Young’s protests against Ron Valdiva’s testimony the previous day. He stated that the investigator’s assumptions in making the round-trip were full of speculations. Specifically, even if Mahler had driven to the desert, Valdiva could not have known the exact route used. There were five separate paths, said the defender, from Cole Crest to the freeway.
Bobby Grace had anticipated the objections. Early that morning, he had arranged for Valdiva and his colleague to drive each possible route, including the one Ron Bowers had discovered on his trip up to Cole Crest, involving the use of what appeared to be a private driveway. In fact, the narrow passage provided access to Blue Heights Drive, which connected to Sunset Plaza Drive. The man riding shotgun had videotaped all five of the drives.
Judge Wesley gave permission for Grace to show the tapes to the jury.
One other matter occupied about twenty minutes of heated discussion. Larry Young planned to call only one witness for the defense, a psychiatrist. To accommodate the doctor’s calendar, Young had received permission to bring him in before the prosecution rested its case.