by Ann Rule
"We have the juvenile suspect in custody," Davis's voice sounded on their radio, giving his odometer reading. “I’m transporting her to the station. Time check? I have oh seven sixteen hours. I am leaving one two five five one Ocean Breeze Drive." Female subjects are never transported by male officers without time and mileage checks.
Sanders and Woods turned around and headed toward the Garden Grove Police Station, spotting Davis's patrol unit ahead of them. The two police cars arrived together.
Cinnamon Brown was first taken into the holding-cell area on the lower level.
"Do you remember me?" Steve Sanders asked.
The girl looked up, and nodded. "Yes."
"Can you tell me where you remember me from?"
"From last fall—at Bolsa Grande High School. You came out when I saw the flasher."
That was right. The kid looked terrible and smelled worse, but she was oriented enough to remember a detective she had seen once five months ago.
"I have a terrible headache," Cinnamon Brown murmured. "And I'm afraid I'm going to throw up."
They quickly handed her a wastebasket and the girl leaned over it, vomiting bright orange material.
Woods administered a GSR test on Cinnamon to see if she had fired a gun. The swabs from her hands would go to the lab along with the GSR tests from Patti Bailey and David Brown.
Sanders turned to Halligan and Davis. "Has she been Mirandized?"
"No, we didn't question her or talk to her at all."
At twenty minutes after seven, paramedics examined Cinnamon. They found her pulse normal, her blood pressure slightly low, and although her pupils were sluggish in reacting to light, they didn't think she was in immediate danger. She was in stable condition, but they warned that that could change at any time. She had clearly been vomiting a lot, ridding herself naturally of whatever she had ingested.
"Do you know what she's taken?"
"No. McLean just found her."
"Well, since you don't know what she's taken, she should be seen by a doctor."
The medics questioned Cinnamon about what she had ingested. She told them she had taken three bottles of pills—one might have been a tranquilizer prescription— and then she started throwing up while she was in the doghouse.
"When did you take the pills?"
"Maybe two-thirty . . . maybe about three. I'm really tired, and my head hurts, and I feel kind of light-headed," Cinnamon responded. "Is my dad all right?"
Sanders looked up sharply. The kid was sick as a dog and she was more worried about her father than herself. He answered carefully, "Your father's all right and Patti's all right."
"How about Linda? How's Linda?" Cinnamon asked.
Sanders looked away and said nothing. McLean was going to do the questioning.
Fred McLean arrived a few minutes later and handed the paramedics the list of the medications he had bagged into evidence. They winced as they read the list. Darvocet-N was a painkiller. The medics checked their PDR (Physicians' Desk Reference). The 100-mg dosage came in large orangey-red capsules, containing 100 mg of propoxyphene napsylate and 650 mg of acetaminophen. Dyazide was a diuretic, usually prescribed for high blood pressure, to rid the tissues of excess fluid.
McLean nodded his head when the medics asked if the bottles had been completely empty.
If Cinnamon Brown had taken all the pills that had originally been in those bottles, she would have swallowed 260 capsules. If she hadn't vomited, she might well have been dead by now. But she was on her feet and making pretty good sense; the bottles must not have been full. Still, she was one miserably sick girl.
She continued to gag and throw up and complain of a headache. Lab technicians were requested to take blood samples that would give them a more accurate picture of the concentration of propoxyphene and Dyazide in her blood. The paramedics stood by watchfully; at the first sign that she was deteriorating, they would transport her to a hospital.
At 7:38 that Tuesday morning, Steve Sanders asked Jail Matron Barbara Gordon to accompany Cinnamon Brown to a cell area where she changed her vomit-stained clothes. Cinnamon removed her sweat pants and shirt, her undergarments, the thin gold chain with the star charm holder from around her neck, her earrings, and handed them to Gordon, who put each item into a separate bag and labeled them.
Sanders had asked the matron to check Cinnamon carefully for any bruises, abrasions, or scratches. She did, but she reported back to Sanders, "There's not a mark on the girl's body."
Gordon mentioned that Cinnamon was menstruating and brought her fresh tampons and pads. Dressed in a clean jail jumpsuit, Cinnamon walked down the police station hallway with Detective Sanders, and up the flight of stairs to the east interview room on the second floor. She seemed terribly weary, and her face was void of all expression.
* * *
At eight A.M., Fred McLean sat across the table from the girl he had led from the dog pen. He saw a pretty girl with brown hair, lightened with one peroxided blond blaze across her bangs. There was still a bit of childhood roundness in her cheeks. Her deep brown eyes had lost all light; she might have been fifty—eighty, even—if he stared only at those eyes. She looked at him stoically, almost hopelessly.
"Cinnamon," McLean said softly. "Cinnamon?"
"What?"
"I need to talk to you now."
She stared back at him silently.
"I need to talk to you. I'm Fred McLean. I'm a detective with the Garden Grove Police Department, and this is Officer Steve Sanders. You've met him before?"
"Yes—at school."
"Okay. Right now, you're at the Garden Grove Police Department. You know that?
"Do you know why you're here?" McLean asked.
"'Cause I hurt Linda."
"Because you hurt Linda," McLean echoed. "How did you hurt Linda?"
"I shot her."
"All right, Cinnamon. I've got to advise you of your rights."
"What do you mean?"
"Okay. I'll just explain to you some things, and then we'll talk. Today is March the nineteenth, 1985, it's Tuesday morning, and right now, it's oh eight oh one hours in the morning. Cinnamon, your last name is Brown?"
"Yes."
"Cinnamon Darlene Brown, and you're fourteen years old?"
"Right. . . yes."
"Okay. You've been taken into custody, Cinnamon—"
"I have?" For the first time, the girl's voice was full of disbelief.
"By me . . . I've taken you into custody because of what you did to Linda. Now, Linda is dead—"
"She's dead?" Again, Cinnamon Brown seemed genuinely shocked.
"Yes."
"Oh . . . no!"
"So you've been taken into custody for murder, and I want you to listen to me right now."
McLean quickly advised Cinnamon of her rights under Miranda and explained them to her, reading from the Garden Grove Police Department's standard Miranda-warning card. She nodded and said "I think so" each time he asked her if she understood. But she seemed to falter in understanding, and McLean explained the Miranda warning in more detail. And when he asked her again if she understood, she said "Yes" firmly. Steve Sanders sat nearby, watching silently.
It was hard to tell if the girl was truly drugged, or if she was only exhausted from a night without sleep. She seemed to drift in and out. When McLean could keep her attention, she responded quickly and intelligently. She didn't appear to need time to form her answers.
"With those rights in mind," he said, "are you willing to talk to me about the charges against you, Cinnamon? Do you understand that you don't have to talk to me?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to tell me what happened last night— yesterday?"
"Yes."
"All right, Cinnamon—you were living at your father's residence at one two five five one Ocean Breeze?"
"We were moving around a lot too."
"Uh-huh. When did you move in with your father?"
"The first day of school."
<
br /> Cinnamon explained to McLean that she had attended the ninth grade at Loara High School during the fall of 1984.
"Why weren't you living with your mother?"
"Oh, because she yells too much. It made me nervous."
"Why does your mother yell at you?"
"Because I'm a brat."
"What do you do to be a brat?"
"I go to the beach every day."
"What do you do at the beach?"
"Get a tan."
"Do you go with anyone?"
"My best friend . . . Krista Taber."
So far, McLean could not see the rebellious teenager he'd expected. Playing hooky at the beach was hardly a major felony. He saw that Cinnamon was getting drowsier, drifting away from him, and he frequently had to repeat her name to bring her back.
"Cinnamon, can you hear me?" McLean repeated.
She waved her arm at him impatiently, as one would shoo a fly.
"Cinnamon? Cinnamon!"
"What?"
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"How many times did you fire the gun?"
She did not respond.
"Cinnamon? The gun. Do you remember how many times you fired the gun?"
"Three . . . times. Once in Patti's bedroom . . . and twice ... at Linda in her room."
"Do you ditch school?" McLean asked, backing off from the danger area for the moment.
"Only during the summer. This week I didn't go because I wasn't feeling good. I started feeling better yesterday, but—"
"Well, we know why you're not feeling good now. Okay, what happened yesterday . . . Cinnamon?"
"I'm here."
"Okay. What happened between you and Linda yesterday?"
". . . Me and my father get along pretty good—but Linda said a while back that she didn't want me in the house. So we moved me out to the trailer ... It still didn't work out. She wanted me to move far away from them. She said, 'If you don't leave the house by the time I wake up, I'm going to kill you,' and . . . everything."
"Linda said she was going to kill you?"
"Yes. Me and her were in a big fight and I don't know why she was—why she started it."
"You have no idea why there was a fight between you and Linda—Cinnamon?"
"I'm here—I don't feel good."
"Why did Linda want you to leave?" McLean hated having to press on with the questioning—the kid was pale green with nausea—but he also felt she was evading his questions. He needed to find some motive for such a seemingly senseless crime.
"She was tired of me, and she didn't want me around. She just doesn't like me."
"Why?"
"I guess because I'm my daddy's daughter—she's jealous. I don't know. We never did get along . . . because one day my dad went to the post office with Patti, and I was in Patti's room drawing a picture and Krystal was choking, and all she did was sit there. She didn't even try to help her, and when my dad gets home, she never hugs him. She never says, 'Hi, dear.' She just ignores him. She's been acting real weird lately."
"When Krystal was choking, did you help her?"
"I tried to, but when she would see me going in, she goes, 'It's my baby—I'll take care of her,' and I go, Fine.'"
"When Krystal was choking, did you actually pick her up to help her? Cinnamon?"
"What?"
"Did you pick Krystal up to help her?"
"No . . . but I wanted to. . . . She like sometimes hits Krystal, and it makes me so mad when Daddy isn't home. One time, my dad saw her do it, and Linda didn't know he was home."
"You didn't like her treating the baby badly? Cinnamon—?"
"I'm here." And then under her breath, she murmured, "Please don't let them get away with murder."
"Well, you've got to answer my questions then," McLean said gently, puzzled by the way the girl's answers didn't always match up to his questions.
"I'm trying to—but I can't keep my eyes open."
"You don't have to keep your eyes open to talk to me. I just want you to concentrate on what you're telling me. Yesterday, Linda said she was going to kill you if you didn't leave?"
"Yes. That's the first time she ever said that. I thought she loved me. She told me she hated my guts, and I go, 'Well, I guess I hate you too.' We started arguing."
"Did Linda say why she hated you?"
"No, she wouldn't tell me."
Cinnamon seemed unaware that she had just contradicted herself. McLean had to drag answers out of her, but she repeated that Linda had hated her, wanted her out of the house, and was cruel to the baby, Krystal. She could not, however, give specific responses when McLean asked her what she and Linda argued about.
"Just little things—I don't know."
"Cinnamon, what little things?"
"Uh?"
"Cinnamon?"
"Uh?"
"CINNAMON?"
"Huh? I'm . . . here."
McLean asked her about the gun, and she remembered that she had found it in a drawer in her father's office, that it was there for anyone to use "in case of emergency." She insisted that she had asked no one how to use it.
"I shot three shots."
"... Three shots?"
"Uh-huh. One was in the room with Patti, and the other two were with . . . with Linda."
"Why did you shoot a bullet in Patti's room?"
"The gun got stuck ... or something in it . . . the thing got stuck—that trigger thing—the thing you pull back. I couldn't turn on the light or she would have seen it."
"Did you ask anyone how to use the gun? Cinnamon? Cinnamon?"
"Uh-huh. No. Uh-uh . . ."
"Cinnamon. Cinnamon."
"I'm here. Would you just stop saying my name?"
McLean realized that he had very little time left with her. She was sleepy, and she was annoyed with his constant questions. Yes, she answered, yes, she knew how to fire a gun. They went out shooting guns in the desert.
"Cinnamon?"
"I'm here."
"Cinnamon?"
"I'm here. . . ."
But she really wasn't. She muttered that they used little guns in the family "'cause they don't do much harm."
"Where did you shoot those little guns?"
"What do you mean?"
"Those little guns—where did you shoot them?"
"I was watching TV, and then I was asleep."
McLean stopped the interview. He wanted to have a reading on the proportion of drugs in the girl's bloodstream before he continued. He looked at her and saw her eyelids drooping.
She seemed to him a very little girl. Not fourteen. Not even twelve. And yet she had just told him she had shot her stepmother.
This time around, he was almost sorry he had found his suspect.
It was eight-twenty when Edith Gwinn of the Golden Coast Lab arrived to take a blood sample from Cinnamon. Over the next eight minutes, three vials were filled. One read #8015, one #8020, and the third was to type in case Cinnamon needed a transfusion later.
Cinnamon seemed to rouse and become more alert during the blood drawing, but only because she was frightened. She had never had blood drawn before.
When McLean attempted to talk to her again at 8:40, her condition had changed radically. Her head lolled, and her eyes were not focusing. She was unable to respond to his questions in anything more than a mumble.
He stopped the interview at once and summoned the paramedics.
Cinnamon's blood pressure had dropped to a point where it would not register on the cuff and had to be palpated. Her pulse was eighty. The paramedics hooked her up to a heart monitor and started an IV as they raced her to the Garden Grove Medical Center. Police Officer Pamela French rode with Cinnamon in the aid car. The girl appeared to be unconscious or asleep during the trip, and there was no conversation.
French remained with Cinnamon in her hospital room from 9:18 until noon, and during that time, Cinnamon Brown did make some statements. But they sounded robot-like to the policewoma
n—almost as if they had been programmed into the teenager's subconscious. Cinnamon would blurt them out from time to time, with virtually no continuity. Although she vomited almost continuously, she was barely awake.
Some of her ramblings were clear enough for Pam French to understand, and some were garbled.
"Haven't slept for twenty-four hours . . . had an accident . . . killed my stepmother . . . didn't do it on purpose, didn't mean to."
Still, despite all the disjointed mumbling, some sentences hung in the air as clearly as if they were written there.
"She was hurting me . . . she hated me . . . she wanted to kill me . . . she wanted me out of the house."
French had not questioned Cinnamon, and she made no response to the girl's words, although she jotted them down in her notes.
"I got the gun out of the office drawer in the house—I was angry with her . . . she hurt my little sister ... I couldn't ignore her choking her."
French had no way of knowing that she was hearing almost exactly the same words that Cinnamon had said to McLean. The girl tossing on the bed beside her seemed bone tired—no, more than that—absolutely exhausted as she fought the effect of the pills she had taken, but she also seemed coherent.
"She hated me . . . wanted me out of the house ... I was angry at her."
And then, finally, Cinnamon Brown could no longer fight the medication's creeping sedation, and she slipped into unconsciousness.
It seemed a classically simple case. The suspect herself had admitted the crime. Although the thought appeared to break his heart, her own father presumed she had done it. Cinnamon had asked Patti Bailey to show her how to shoot the .38 only hours before Linda was shot. What other answer could there be? A jealous teenager, resenting her stepmother, chafing at rules, regulations, orders to do chores, and believing that she was the object of hatred and rejection, had struck back.
With a gun. She was sorry now, horrified to hear that Linda had died.
But it was far too late.
If the events of March 19, 1985, had been a movie and not tragically real, it would have been over. But a confession is never enough to take into court. It is only a part of the body of the crime; the corpus delicti is not—as so many people believe—the actual corpse, but is, instead, all the components that make up each crime itself.
