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"You gave them to her," David instructed.
"She didn't give them to me," Cinnamon argued.
"However you want to do it, I'll do it," Patti offered.
"Just tell them the truth," Cinnamon repeated for the tenth time.
What was David up to? Newell tried to follow the conversational volleys. David was reconstructing history. And Patti was allowing him to serve her up on a plate. Why?
And then the whole plan changed.
"There's nothing to tell them," Patti said.
"None of us remember a whole lot," David agreed.
Cinnamon was incredulous. You could hear it in her voice. "You don't remember a whole lot of what happened that night? Even Grandpa knows."
Cinnamon began to pepper her father and Patti with questions.
How many gunshots?
Who shot the gun?
You had me write that note. Why?
Both David and Patti were suddenly seized by a hazy kind of amnesia. They were stonewalling Cinnamon. David thought maybe Larry or Alan had broken in. Patti could not remember the tiger tapestry in her room. "I can't think of tapestry—I'm thinking Tupperware. I don't know. . . . Believeme,ifIwastoremember,I'dcomehereandtalkto you."
Cinnamon stared at her visitors with incomprehension. They had come up to Ventura with their stupid plot to play switcheroo, and now, suddenly, their minds had gone blank. Neither remembered more than their own names.
"You don't remember anything said at the house or when we were in the van or anything?"
"The van?" Patti asked vacantly.
"Oh, now you're going to say, 'What van?' Right?"
It must have seemed so ridiculous to Cinnamon that Newell heard her laugh. It must have seemed like a bad joke to her.
"No, I don't remember," Patti said. "All I remember is stuff that I read in the paper."
"... You know I'm trying to make sure I'm not crazy," Cinnamon said. "That's what I'm trying to do—review some of this with you so that I—I'm trying to find myself—" "I understand," David said with a trace of smugness. "And I don't have any problem."
"All the lies and stuff, it makes me go delirious."
"Delirious," Patti agreed. "I hallucinate the way you wouldn't believe."
Cinnamon asked her father if he remembered telling her to get rid of all the rejected suicide notes.
"Probably ... I don't know. I don't remember."
"Are you related to me?" Cinnamon laughed. "Are you clones of the people that I knew out there?"
"Cinny, when my liver went bad," David whined, "it fucked up my whole body. I don't remember a lot about Data Recovery."
"I've been here," Cinnamon answered. "It's fucked up my life."
Newell listened to the mazes of David Brown's reasoning, once again marveling at his fancy conversational footwork. He was suddenly going the sympathy route, trying to convince Cinnamon that she had it a lot better in prison than he did on the outside.
"I know, I know," David said in a tired voice. "I have to rely on Dad—"
"If I can be strong," his daughter argued, "you also can be strong."
"I'm trying. I'm fighting the best I can, but that happened to my body. I've got nothing to do with it. Nobody asked you to care for the dying."
Cinnamon turned to Patti, determined to try again. "I asked Daddy last time why it was that we went through with this, and he told me his opinion.... What is your reason why you went through with it?"
"Because they were both after him and you didn't want him to be gone," Patti blurted.
"We're talking about Linda?" Cinnamon asked.
And suddenly Patti backed off. No, she recalled no phone conversation between Linda and Alan, had heard no plots against David. Maybe David had heard about a plot. She
David Brown, age eight. The sixth of eight children, David was on the road and on his own when most kids were in junior high school.
David with Brenda Kurges, teenagers in love at sixteen; July 1969. Exactly one year later, Brenda gave birth to their daughter, Cinnamon.
David and Cinnamon, about three, on an outing. His marriage to Brenda was in trouble, but his little girl adored him.
A proud father, David Brown holds Cinnamon, five months old; November 26, 1970.
Cinnamon Brown, seven and a half, minus a tooth. As a young girl, she was a frequent guest at her father's home, with both his second wife, Lori, and his third wife, Linda.
David Brown, age twenty-nine. "The Process," his invention to clean computer disks, had earned him a small fortune and fame in computer circles.
Patti Bailey, age thirteen or fourteen. Unhappy at home, she was thrilled to be invited to live with her big sister, Linda, and brother-in-law, David.
Linda Brown, age twenty. She adored her husband, David, and happily played "Mom" to both her younger sister, Patti, and David's daughter, Cinnamon.
Cinnamon Brown, age fourteen, a bubbly, quickwitted teenager, often shuttled back and forth between her mother, Brenda, and her father, David.
* * *
The green stucco house on Ocean Breeze Drive where Linda Brown was shot to death on March 19, 1985. When investigators arrived at the scene, Cinnamon was missing.
Linda died in the ornate iron bed she shared with David. The murder weapon was dropped on the floor of their bedroom.
David's dresser in the early morning after Linda was shot. He owned expensive jewelry, took many prescription drugs for his myriad ailments, and prided himself on being a wonderful father.
* * *
In David's dresser drawer, the holster that had held the murder weapon was laid on top of a picture of Patti Bailey.
Patti's room on Ocean Breeze Drive. She had everything a teenager could want, thanks to David's generosity.
Cinnamon slept in this small travel trailer parked in back of the house.
On the morning after the murder, Garden Grove Detective Fred McLean finally found Cinnamon shivering and sick in a doghouse in the backyard of the Ocean Breeze Drive home.
Cinnamon was taken to Garden Grove police headquarters to answer questions that might identify Linda's killer. Suffering from a massive drug overdose, she collapsed shortly after this picture was taken and was rushed to a hospital. Later a confession was extracted from her, but that was not the end of the story.
David spared no expense in finding the perfect spot for Linda's ashes. Her remains were placed in the base of a perpetual fountain, marked by this plaque composed by David.
David Brown paid cash for this lavish mansion in the Anaheim Hills, and moved in six months after Linda's murder.
The backyard of David Brown's home on Chantilly Street, where he lived in luxury with his daughter Krystal, Patti Bailey, and her newborn child.
A police surveillance picture of a visit David Brown made to the California Youth Authority school in Ventura. As Cinnamon, back to camera, talked with her father, their conversation was taped surreptitiously.
Another police surveillance photograph taken two weeks later when David and Patti (left) visited Cinnamon. This conversation was also taped.
Left to right: Detective Fred McLean of the Garden Grove police, Orange County Deputy District Attorney Jeoffrey Robinson, and Orange County District Attorney's Senior Investigator Jay Newell. These three men worked overtime to unravel the baffling mystery of Linda Brown's murder. [Leslie Rule]
Cinnamon Brown, now twenty, on the witness stand. [Leslie Rule]
At a tense moment in her testimony, Cinnamon broke down as she answered questions about Linda Brown's murder. Sandra Wingerd, court reporter, is in the foreground. [Leslie Rule]
Patti Bailey, now twenty-two, gave nervous and at times almost inaudible testimony on the witness stand. [Leslie Rule]
David Brown, escorted into the courtroom by Bailiff "Mitch" Miller, May 1990. [Leslie Rule]
David conferred constantly with defense attorney Gary Pohlson, and offered his own legal strategies. [Leslie Rule]
Patti Bailey, age twenty
, was also taken into custody and interrogated. Police suspected that both she and David were somehow implicated in the crime.
David Brown, age thirty-five, at the time of his questioning about the murder of his wife Linda.
When Patti's memory faltered, both Gary Pohlson (left) and Jeoffrey Robinson (center) pointed out inconsistencies in a transcript of her earlier testimony. [Leslie Rule]
As she testified about her sister's murder, Patti wiped away sudden tears. [Leslie Rule]
David Brown, in the courtroom, turned to look at media cameras. He did not testify. [Leslie Rule]
ill
During a dramatic moment in the spring 1990 trial, Gary Pohlson (foreground), the defense attorney, questioned Cinnamon Brown (on the witness stand), while Judge Donald McCartin listened. Sandra Wingerd, court reporter, is in front of Cinnamon. [Leslie Rule]
Richard Steinhart, aka "Liberty," former Hessian motorcycle gang member and one-time hired hit man, was a surprising witness at the trial. [Don Lasseter]
In a police surveillance photo, Huntington Beach police detective Bob Moran, as "Animal, the hit man" (left) and Richard Steinhart (right) collected a $10,000 check from a go-between. The person who orchestrated Linda Brown's murder intended the money to pay for the murders of Jay Newell, Jeoff Robinson, and Patti Bailey.
Cinnamon Brown, twenty, as she waited for an end to her long ordeal.
remembered nothing about it. "One of us overheard her on the phone. . . ." Patti trailed off.
"Well, eeney, meeney, miney, mo," Cinnamon said sarcastically.
Every time Patti's memory let in the slightest beam of sunlight, David cut her off. He reminded Cinnamon of a "memory" he wanted her to keep firmly in her mind. "I've been shot at before. If someone was going to kill me, let him try. Maybe they'll wound me. Maybe they'll miss, and they'll end up in jail. Let them try. I remember telling you guys that, and that's the last thing I remember telling you when I left the house—'Don't worry about it. I'm going to clear my head. I'm going to the beach. Just leave everything. You guys go to bed. Just. . . forget everything. If it happens, it happens.' You guys said something. I remember this. You guys said that 'Alan might be outside waiting for you. He knows that you go to the beach a lot.' And you guys said, 'Don't go.'"
Cinnamon shook her head, mystified. "I don't remember that. ... I remember you talking to me and Patti. In the living room, saying, 'It has to be done tonight,' and that you were going to leave."
"I don't remember that either," David said earnestly.
Cinnamon laughed. She was hanging in there. Her life depended on this, and yet she seemed to find her father's spotty memory almost comic. Either Cinnamon had made up the story she told Newell and Robinson from whole cloth, or David and Patti were systematically lying to her, deliberately confusing her, keeping her at bay and most of all, away from the authorities.
"Why do you guys make it seem like I was alone in this—you guys had—" she pleaded. "You put all the responsibility on me! I'm the one that's in here." Cinnamon seemed to have forgotten the wire. She was speaking from what sounded like her very gut. "Does it really matter who pulled the trigger?" she asked.
Newell sat up straight. What was she saying now?
"I remember you," Cinnamon said, turning to David, "saying you wouldn't be able—you don't have the stomach or something to stay in the house."
"And I said I didn't have the stomach for anything that happened. . . . When I came home, Cinny, I was in shock." David's memory had shrunk, he said, sometimes to five minutes.
Disgusted, Cinnamon turned again to Patti. "How do you think I feel when I think that the father of your baby is my father—because of what I saw you and my dad doing inside the store that last time?"
"How do I think you feel? Hurt. Upset. Angry. PO'd . . . not understanding."
"Can you explain that to me?"
"I don't know."
"Why did you do it?" Cinnamon asked her father.
"Like in the store? Probably because I felt insecure. I was upset about everything that I've been seeing, experiencing with Linda. I had no idea she was into drugs. ... I just felt like there was something wrong between me and Linda. . . . There are things in a marriage and all that and you need security. Now, you need somebody that'll hold you and all that when you feel like the whole world's going to shit on you any minute now . . . whatever it was that we [he and Patti] were feeling before . . . was very much not real."
"Then why was she still living with you?"
"Because we're all the family we have left. Who's going to help watch her?" He nodded his head toward Krystal, who, at four, was happily running after the birds who hovered nearby to peck at doughnut crumbs. Grandma and Grandpa couldn't care for Krystal, David said.
"Besides," Patti said swiftly, as if she could hold it in no longer. "I still care about him. ... I care and I still love him. I'm not going to leave unless he tells me I have to leave. I want to be there for him the way he's been there for me."
It was a whoops. David had assured Cinnamon that Patti had left his home long before.
Patti watched David's annoyance and gradually changed her story. Yes, she had left—to go up to Oregon and find herself.
Cinnamon still wanted to know about Heather, but they would not answer her.
No, David had no interest—that way—in Patti. "I have seen a lot of women." He listed them, and Patti's face showed raw pain.
"I still love him, and I always will," she said with surprising fervor. "And I don't like it. 'Cause I know that everyone else is just out for whatever he's got, and I honestly love him for what he is—not for what he can give me. I love him for what he is, but see—back then, I mean, I was still an immature little brat like I always was, and I didn't think twice before I did something. ... It hurts, but I mean like—just because that's the way I feel doesn't mean that's the way he feels."
There it was, hidden in among the lies. Newell had little question that Patti Bailey Brown was telling the truth. For whatever unfathomable reason, she truly loved David Brown.
"My love for her," David told Cinnamon about Patti, "is no different than my love for you and my love for Krystal. There's nothing physical there."
"You mean, then, that would be considered as incest then—what I saw you and her do?" Cinnamon asked.
"Kiss?" David asked.
"Right."
"What's incest?" Patti asked.
"It's not incest." David spoke patiently. "A lot of parents kiss their kids on the mouth—"
"Not like that," Cinnamon tossed back.
"Maybe not like that, but it didn't feel right then and it's never felt right since."
"So you must've felt more for her than just a daughter?"
"I think I tried to because of an insecurity at the time. I might have tried to . . . fathers do it with their daughters, I mean, you know. That's not. . . that unusual. As a matter of fact, it's very common. They have sex with their daughters. It doesn't make any difference to them . . . whoever's handy."
Jay Newell turned away. He wasn't surprised at David Brown's philosophy on incest. That didn't keep him from being disgusted.
The kid was doing great. She was asking all the right questions, but the answers were coming back from left field.
Cinnamon asked about the insurance payoff on Linda. This time there was a new answer. "{Crystal's got the insurance money," David said. "I don't need the insurance money. You know how much I've earned—since August first? One hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. Why do I need insurance money? Cinny, my Data Recovery business account has—I don't even know how much money is in it. My personal account has always been like around seventy thousand dollars. . . . Cinny, I can make a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars a job. I could make three million dollars on one job we just did for the bank."
Cinnamon barely listened, but Newell made a note to recheck all insurance policies on Linda Brown. That one question had shaken David up more than almost all the rest. He di
dn't want to be connected with insurance payoffs.
Cinnamon asked Patti and David to go over the night of March 18, three years earlier, for her.
Patti quickly recalled everything to the point when she had gone to her room to sleep. David interrupted as she started to drift into the dangerous time just afterward. "I want to ask you a question," he said. "Do you guys wear state shoes right now? Do you have to wear state shoes during visiting?"
It was off the wall. It reminded Newell of the time he watched David pull Brenda's hair during Cinnamon's sentencing. Was it that he didn't care at all—or was he distracting Patti?
From murder to shoes in an instant.
But Cinnamon dragged him back to murder.
David was sure now that Larry Bailey had probably killed
Linda, thinking he was killing David. "Linda was laying on my side of the bed. The cops told me. They got pictures of it and everything. . . . She was on my side of the bed, on the left. They said the room was dark, and I think whoever did it thought they were getting me."
In truth, Linda Brown was found exactly where she always slept, on the right side of the bed.
"You think whoever did it thought they were shooting you?" Cinnamon asked incredulously.
