by Ann Rule
Pohlson relentlessly questioned Patti on the methods of murder considered. Each time Cinnamon or Patti talked about this, there were more ways. Patti remembered suggesting, when they lived in Yucca Valley, that the television could fall on Linda and hit her on the head.
"And another plan?"
"Garden Grove was the 'paralyzing plan.'"
"Did you ever think that it was wrong to paralyze a newborn baby's mother?"
"What do you mean?" Patti asked dully.
"Did you ever think it was wrong to paralyze a newborn baby's mother?"
Clearly, Patti saw in Pohlson a failure to understand. He was talking apples, and the subject was oranges.
"There was always a discussion about how to kill Linda— when she wasn't around . . . stabbing, suffocating. The day before we talked about pushing her off a cliff—me or Cinnamon."
"How ... ?"
"She was supposed to be out looking at the view and one of us was supposed to take a running jump and push her over."
Who was to have done the stabbing? Pohlson's questions had lulled Patti into even flatter affect.
"Cinnamon."
". . . Suffocation?"
"I don't remember who was going to do it."
"Were you willing to suffocate her?"
"Yes, I was."
There were two constant themes portending that Linda Bailey Brown would die. Cinnamon could not bear to lose her father. And Patti?
"I didn't want nothing to happen to David. David was everything to me. "
No one in the gallery doubted that that was true.
Pohlson was occasionally brutal in his cross-examination of Patti Bailey. He accused her of telling the truth because she thought it would help her case to cooperate with the prosecution. Didn't she think that being a witness against David Brown would help her?
"I didn't know I'd be a witness until the end of December. ... I asked Mr. Rubright if I could talk to the district attorneys. We agreed it would be best if I talked to them. . . ."
"You thought you'd get a better deal?"
"No."
"Did you have any hope that it would help?"
"Yeah, I hoped it would help—but I was going to plead guilty either way."
"Were you angry—upset with David Brown?"
"I was upset."
"When?"
"Sometime in October, over a statement he made to the police . . . that he was scared of me. ... I was angry and upset with everyone at that point."
". . . When did you decide to do the 'right thing'?" Pohlson asked, his voice full of scorn.
"When I realized I couldn't live with myself. ... I was having a difficult time. I was blocking it until November seventh. I still couldn't remember details. It's hard for me to believe my sister was dead. When I was in a car, it seemed like she was still there. I went to her funeral, but I didn't believe she was dead."
Each lie that Patti told—every one—was brought out and analyzed in this grueling cross-examination. Patti replied that she had not lied; she was "confused. I didn't want to remember that I'd been so involved in my sister's murder."
Patti Bailey Brown, swiveling in her chair, quivering like a leaf in the wind, her hands nervously touching her face, was questioned on redirect, recross. She had exposed all that she was, everything she thought.
It left her with nothing.
44
Jeoff Robinson, with help from Jay Newell and Fred McLean, had choreographed this trial so that the living witnesses were followed by audio or video tapes that either confirmed or refuted their testimony. The audiotape made at the Ventura School on August 27, 1988, played now in the courtroom, David and Patti and Cinnamon talking together two weeks after David's first taped visit. David is offering Patti in exchange for Cinnamon in prison. David Brown's ethnic slurs, his raunchy sexual jokes, his easy explanation that incest was normal, "that a lot of fathers have sex with their daughters," were heard in this courtroom.
It was a very long tape, and the jury and gallery listened again on Wednesday morning, May 16. There would be many more tapes, so many that Judge McCartin suggested that popcorn be provided.
Even if David Brown chose not to testify, his voice and his opinions were now familiar in this courtroom. When the jurors finished hearing what was actually said during David's visits to his daughter in prison, the videotape of the interview just after David Brown's and Patti Bailey's arrest was played. He was talking to Jay Newell and Fred McLean. David's face was on a large television screen, and the jurors were afforded a viewpoint never imagined before such technical advances. David leaned forward, fascinated by his own image.
It was once again nine o'clock on the morning of September 22, 1988, and for three hours, the two investigators and the suspect jousted in the tiny yellow interview room. At the beginning, David Brown, sipping Perrier and smoking, was the confident millionaire computer genius, tossing out his familiar claims to fame: he and Linda—"Mr. and Mrs. Coca-Cola"—his Pentagon contacts, the Challenger, the Stealth bomber, the MGM hotel. He bragged of his "dynamite" sex life with his late wife: Linda's "quirks," her desire to please him with her hands. It was too dimly lit in Department 30 to see what effect these intimate revelations had on the jurors.
When this interview took place, it had been only four weeks since Cinnamon's body wire caught every word of her father's visits. Even so, David's memory of those visits was vague. Newell even had to help him remember when he visited.
David's recall of the reason Cinnamon summoned him up to CYA was that she wanted his blessing on a crush she had on an Asian boy. She was afraid he would be prejudiced because of the jokes he made about the Vietnamese in Garden Grove. But of course, David told Newell and McLean, he had no feelings against "Orientals." "If he was black, of course I'd want to meet him."
Minute by minute, David Brown wove himself a trap of words. He had no notion that the visits with Cinnamon were on tape. He manufactured a different story. He did discuss Cinnamon's confusion, her desire to know "the truth" about the murder. But he molded the story to suit himself. Newell allowed him to dig a deeper hole.
"The board told her I killed Linda for the insurance money. . . . She said, 'Daddy, I know you didn't do it,' and I said. 'Well, tell me, honestly—did you do it?' and she says, 'No, Daddy, I was outside. ... I remember being outside and hearing the gunshots.'"
He re-reconstructed his last visit to Ventura—on August 27, 1988. "Cinnamon said, 'One way or another, I want out of here now!' and I told her I was as anxious as she was to find out who did it."
The long tape was remarkable. It was almost possible to see wheels working inside David Brown's head. He dodged, feinted, created, and ran from any connection to Linda's murder. His voice was confident. Every answer was complicated and started another trail away from Newell's questions. David presented himself as the complete father, the long-suffering martyr who only wanted to find out the truth and put the real shooter behind bars.
He pointed always away from himself.
Twenty-two minutes after he hinted that Patti or Cinnamon may have been guilty of murder, David changed his mind. It may well have been Patti and Linda's brothers. Perhaps Alan. Perhaps Larry. "I've been shot at when I was driving."
Newell asked a blunt question about the conversations at Ventura School. "Did you and Cinnamon discuss—at that meeting—about you being involved with Cinnamon and Patti in a plan to kill Linda?"
"That's what I'm leading up to—"
"Well, yes or no . . . ?" Newell pressed.
"Her understanding that there was a conspiracy—I told her I knew of no such conspiracy for anyone to hurt me."
"Who brought that up?"
"That's the hard part—"
"Who brought it up?"
". . . Cinnamon . . ."
"Did you, prior to Linda being killed, have discussions about killing Linda?"
"They had suggested it, and I had told them, 'No. I would rather die.' Cinnamon and Patti both said they would
kill Linda—before they would let anyone hurt me. I told them I've had threats on my life so many times that it makes no difference to me."
Another five minutes, and David then announced that he had had threats on his life that had nothing at all to do with Linda and her family, sinister forces waiting on the streets to shoot him.
"How much money did you get from Linda's death?"
"I don't honestly know—it went into savings. . . ."
"How much?"
"Maybe five or six hundred thousand ..."
"Would it be closer to eight hundred thousand?" Newell prodded.
"I honestly don't know."
Nor was David Brown sure how many insurance companies he had with policies on Linda. Or how many paid off. One insurance company didn't want to pay off, and he didn't really care. David thought they settled for about $10,000. (In truth, he had demanded—and received— $75,000.)
"Did you ever have a physical relationship with Patti Bailey?" It sounded like a throwaway question, but each time David Brown was asked about either insurance or his relationship with Patti, he tensed, and Newell was obviously using that. "Hell, no . . . ," David said. His words had no expression, nor did his follow up-question: "Why would you ask that?"
David was not even sure where Cinnamon was found the night of the murder. He thought "in the backyard."
"Did you have anything to do with giving Cinnamon drugs that night?" Newell asked.
"God, no . . ." The same flat emphasis.
"Did you prepare some drugs for Cinnamon to take to make it look like she was committing suicide?"
"God, no . . ."
"Okay." Newell pressed. "Did you that night that Linda was killed have Cinnamon get a suicide note to have in her possession?"
"No, I would never have been a party to anything like that."
"Did you have Cinnamon do some practice notes to have handy that night?"
"For what reason ... ? I'm not a stupid person. ... If I was going to stage something, it would be a lot more sophisticated than this. I've even got books at home that I've started writing—my imagination was extremely vivid. . . . That's why I'm good at the business I'm in."
"Books that—" Newell began to ask.
"Science fiction . . . My imagination was strong enough to—God, even from watching TV, you can get a million ideas of how to stage something," David insisted. ". . . If I was to prepare her [for suicide], I would have given her very large quantities of tranquilizers and muscle relaxers."
"Did you ever talk to Cinnamon at Ventura School about giving her the drugs that night?"
"No way ... I would have told her she was out of her mind."
"You would have?" Newell's doubt was thick in his voice. "One last question—and it's a yes or no question—are you actually the one who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed Linda?"
"Absolutely not." Again, the flat answer. David Brown was not annoyed or surprised or indignant.
And that, in itself, was damning.
An hour and forty-five minutes into this interview, David seemed slightly distracted, but still confident. His voice had a new hollowness in it. and he drew out his words, syllable by syllable. And then, casually, Newell opened a manila envelope and removed four eight-by-ten surveillance photos. One by one, he set them down on the table in front of David Brown. He became absolutely motionless. He froze, stunned.
"Hey, David," Newell said easily, "we have pictures of you during your visit to Ventura School, and we have tape recordings of that conversation, and you're not telling me the truth right now, because you discussed all those things with her in very great detail."
For the first time in almost two hours, David Brown had nothing to say.
Newell said repeatedly, "David, I believe you when you say you didn't pull the trigger. I believe that. Up until today, I had doubts—but I believe you."
"I couldn't hurt anybody. . . ."
"I believe you didn't pull the trigger."
Each time Jay Newell confirmed his "belief" in David Brown, he opened the door wider for David to give someone else up in this most heinous crime. If he had read him correctly, David would turn in his mother or his father or Krystal to save himself.
The jury was seeing a police interrogation, not testimony about what went on, but the actual interrogation. They would be able to judge for themselves what they believed was true. David Arnold Brown was testifying on this flickering television screen.
Jay Newell asked him for the truth. David backpedaled eight years, admitting to illegal sex with fifteen-year-old Linda, discussing The Process and embellishing the assassination attempts on his life.
"What does this have to do with Linda dying?"
"I'm getting to that."
McLean, who had been silent, gruffly reminded David that he and Newell were only looking for the truth. "We are capable of disproving any lies."
Pushed into a corner, David once again sacrificed Patti Bailey. She had been his devoted slave for almost fifteen years. She would die for him, or kill for him. It didn't matter.
"I need to know if I need to be afraid anymore—for Krystal and myself," he said shakily. "I need to know if I'm going to be protected."
"Protected from whom?" McLean asked.
". . . From Patti."
Two hours and six minutes into this interview, David gave up Patti Bailey as the probable killer. He confided that he had lived in constant terror of Patti, afraid that she would kill him or Krystal. To Newell's suggestion that Patti be asked to move out, David explained she would be even more dangerous then, There was no telling what she might do. No, it was safer to let her live in his house, safer not to set her off. "I'm scared to death of that girl."
"Who do you believe killed Linda?" Newell asked.
"There's no doubt in my mind—Patti."
In this utterly fascinating study of psychopathy, David Brown completely reversed himself on everything he had emphatically stated at the beginning of the interrogation. He had assessed the damage to himself and "erased" what he had said before.
Now, he remembered telling Cinnamon to say she did it so she would get less time.
Now, he remembered telling Cinnamon to say she had lost her memory.
Now, he remembered that he went to his fourteen-year-old daughter and asked her to lie—to protect Patti.
Now, he recalled preparing medication for Cinnamon to drink to make it look as if she were trying to commit suicide. But he didn't want to hurt her. He had mixed up Tylenol, Bayer aspirin, and baking soda, "just something to make her sick to her stomach." He would not admit that he gave Cinnamon any medication that would kill her, or even hurt her.
Now, David admitted that he knew about the plot to kill Linda, but he was helpless to stop it. Patti promoted it. David could not control Cinnamon. "She was headstrong just like her mother. . . .
"This is the honest-to-God truth. ... I didn't think they were going to do it. I told them, 'Absolutely no way.' I said, 'Cinny, I hope this is a game. . . .' She said, 'No, Daddy, it's no game.' "
And then David had driven away from the house where his beloved wife slept, fully aware of the wicked girls' plot to murder her. The concoction he had made for Cinnamon was, he insisted, only something that would foam up and "maybe make her numb for a while."
But he reminded the detectives he had told them not to do it.
"Who got the gun out, David?" Newell asked.
"I believe it was in Linda's nightstand."
"Who got the gun out?"
". . . Either Patti or Cinnamon.
"I told Cinnamon if she was to go through with this thing, no matter what I said, I didn't want to be there. If she was to go through with this thing, she should leave the note somewhere like in the kitchen where everyone would see it, and she was to go hide in her trailer."
David Brown actually sounded relieved. He seemed to believe that he was in the clear. He had given up Patti. He had given up Cinnamon. He embroidered a little more on Patti's
guilt. He thought he had heard her confess in her dreams. Not, of course, because they were sleeping together, but because Patti was given to "nap attacks."
If that was not enough, he offered more. At the end of November of 1985, he said he had asked Patti directly if she was the one who killed Linda. "She said, 'You really don't want to know.'"
"Why, then," Newell asked incredulously, "why at the end of November 1985—you have a daughter in prison— why didn't you bring that forward?"
"What could I do?"
". . . This is September of 1988, David."
"She didn't really confess. ... I only heard her reliving it. Is that proof?"
For just a moment, Newell—who never betrayed emotion during interrogation—had disgust in his voice. His own daughters meant everything to him.
"Do you have a sexual relationship with Patti?"
". . . God, no . . ."
"Did you ever have a sexual relationship with Patti?"
"We hold each other . . . because it gets to me real bad over what's happened. It just tears me up—"
"Wait a minute," McLean's voice broke in. "You're telling me and Jay that you embrace—for support—the woman that you believe killed your wife, who you told us earlier you were so deeply in love with?"
David could not come up with an answer to that one before the next question,
"Is Patti in love with you?" Newell asked.
"That's the most confusing part."
"Yes or no."
"I don't know."
David Brown had tripped himself up again and again, and now he accused McLean and Newell of playing word games with him. He could not explain why he had left Cinnamon in prison while he lived with the woman he had just said murdered his "beloved wife." He could not explain why he continued to live with that woman he called a murderess. He could not explain why he would bring his parents to live with a murderess. He was not even sure if he had had "love" or "sex" with Patti.
Newell and McLean had spun the spinner, and he had lost his balance.
The screen went fuzzy. The interview was over.
45
The tape that Gary Pohlson feared lingered in the minds of everyone who had seen and heard it. The courtroom was quiet, save for the sound of David Brown scuffling his feet nervously beneath his chair.