The saga of Shankster Gangster

Brent Hopkins, a good friend of mine and the lead reporter behind the ”Exposed: Porn in the Valley” series I contributed to, had a great read in yesterday’s LA Daily News.

Somewhere between the time David Steinberg helped Chris Walsh move out of his apartment and the day Walsh ended up shot five times and stuffed in a trash can, their friendship went south.

Or so went the dramatic tale that opened Steinberg’s murder trial Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court downtown. Once described by his former attorney as a kiddie gangster, the 39-year-old Granada Hills man is now balding in a rumpled gray suit, accused of executing Walsh, his former housemate, in 2003.

The prosecution opened its case against Steinberg and co-defendant Jeffrey Weaver, 37, promising a story involving a member of the Nazi Lowriders prison gang and “people with dark hearts.”

That neo-Nazi informant is Tony Shane Wilson, AKA Shankster Gangster, a bombastic bigot with swastikas tattooed on his earlobes. Anyone want to claim that Steinberg’s being sunk by anti-Semites?