by Ann Rule
"She didn't grow up to be Shirley Temple. You saw her—almost 'zombielike,' but was that because she's just an innately cold person, or was that because she's not that far removed from the hold that's been placed on her for several years? Even adults can be brainwashed by other adults. Imagine what vulnerable children in the right situation would do—what can happen.
". . . Mr. Brown, for his own perverted and selfish indulgences, prepares Patti Bailey to the point that she views him as her sole sense of support. . . . She told you, 'He was my life support.' He was the cure-all for her . . . and Mr. Brown was very adept at insuring that he remained that way, by sequestering these girls. ... He gets her to the point where she is willing to take the life of her own flesh and blood—her sister. "
The courtroom was silent except for Jeoff Robinson's voice. It was not that he had given the jurors new information; it was more that they were hearing a litany of "atrocious acts" so packed into the same time frame that they became more unthinkable.
During these long months, they had heard all the tapes, they had heard David Brown's voice cajoling, denying, explaining (although never from the witness stand), and they had seen the young girls that the DA was talking about. In the beginning of this trial, all of it was akin to viewing a television drama.
Now, it was real.
"After the murder," Robinson continued, "the atrocious acts don't stop. As time goes by, things seem to get worse and worse. We have Cinnamon Brown's own life jeopardized by her father. . . . What would have happened if Cinnamon didn't vomit? There's no question what would have happened. You would have had the perfect murder. You would have had the act you wanted done—the murder of your wife—you would have had her sister there in her place, someone still young enough to mold, not twenty-three and independent. You would have had a suicide note that would have extricated you. And then—if the stomach [Cinnamon's] doesn't vomit—you've got no witnesses.
"If that stomach doesn't vomit"—he nodded to the jury— "you 're driving your car or you 're at work [today] and I'm down in my office. We're not here. To think that a father could jeopardize his own flesh and blood in that fashion is scary. . . .
"Mr. Brown knew that his daughter might not live to tell about it. His other alternative was that if she did, she's prepared with a story. . . . This fourteen-year-old girl— because she loves her father so much—is prepared to go through with it. . . . The defense is going to tell you Mr. Brown hasn't done any of this—it's those girls—those 'crazy girls'; they've done this on their own. Well, if you're convinced that that's how it happened, then so be it. Walk him out of here."
Robinson reminded the jury that the thrust of this case came through most forcefully in the three-and-a-half-hour interview that David Brown had with Jay Newell and Fred McLean on the morning of his arrest on September 22, 1988. "After he lies for a couple of hours, the walls finally start tumbling in. He can only plug up so many holes, and finally, like water, the truth starts coming through. He kills himself. That videotape is his end. That's what this case is all about."
Robinson pointed out that Ventura was not a school; it was a prison. "Cinnamon Brown's been put on hold since she was fourteen. Mr. Brown's trying so hard to keep her incarcerated and keep himself out of it. How far can this guy go?
"This man doesn't have a conscience. None. This man is the typical sociopathic personality. All he thinks about is me. Everybody else in his life is just a pawn. He can justify whatever he does by always saying that he's worth it."
A major factor in proving David Brown guilty of murder had been to establish his "consciousness of guilt." Was he, indeed, aware that he was guilty of murder in the death of his wife, even though he was miles away when the shots were fired? Robinson stressed that Brown's actions after the crime showed a great deal of conscious knowledge of his own guilt.
"He plans to eliminate and/or kill the obstacles to his freedom—the prosecutor and the investigator that know the case so well—get them out so the new people can get in. Is that not the conscience of a guilty man?
"And then the ultimate was—to kill this woman he's married to—Patti Bailey—you'll see the marriage certificate. He was willing to kill this wife because she could testify against him."
Robinson spoke next of Linda Bailey. Linda was the forgotten woman. She had been dead for more than five years. Dead so long that it was easy to forget that her death began this long tumbling down into utter evil. Linda's little girl sat in the courtroom fidgeting, unable to understand what the man in front was talking about. Krystal Brown rubbed her eyes and leaned her head on her grandmother's ample shoulder.
It fell to Robinson to explain the legal rituals attendant to murder. Count I was for the murder of Linda Brown. Count II was for conspiracy to murder. Was it necessary to explain murder? For the record, perhaps. "Every person who kills a human being with malice aforethought is guilty of violating Section 187 of the penal code. . . ."
The case before the jury was, Robinson said, "all or nothing." (Jury instructions agreed upon earlier had eliminated the possibility of second-degree murder or manslaughter charges.) "Mr. Brown is either guilty of first-degree murder or he is not guilty. . . . The defendant has the right to have a lesser offense included in the charge. In this case . . . we'll go to accessory after the fact. Mr. Brown would like very much for you to find him guilty of this. . . . He would shake your hand fifty times over if you gave him one of those. That would be a gift!" Robinson pointed to the display board with the definition of first-degree murder. "The facts of this case are a textbook first-degree murder case."
If the jurors had agreed with Robinson's case thus far, they had accepted that David Brown planned the killing of Linda Brown, premeditated the killing of Linda Brown for a long time—years—before she was eventually killed. Her murder was not the result of a sudden, rash impulse. "A cold, calculated judgment and decision. ... It can only be first-degree murder," Robinson said succinctly.
The next explanation of the law was more important to the layman, most of whom assume that it is necessary to actually pull the trigger or place one's hands around the throat of a victim to qualify as a killer. Not necessarily. "When two or more people gather to plan a crime, it's more likely that that crime will be pulled off," Robinson explained. "The legislature wanted to thwart that problem by making this—the actual planning—a separate crime. That's conspiracy."
How could a person—not the actual perpetrator of the crime—be guilty? The legal concept was one of "vicarious liability." "This says," Robinson explained, "that there can be many players in a particular crime. There can be the 'hands-on' slayer—but if you aid and abet, you can be as guilty as the actual perpetrator. . . . Mr. Brown is equally guilty, even though he's not the actual perpetrator."
Robinson was doing a good job of explaining rather difficult legal sticking points to a lay jury. This case was quite different from television murder trials. David Brown's hands were not stained with any victim's blood—not literally. But if Robinson was to be believed, they dripped scarlet.
The defense had stressed—and surely would continue to stress—that their client had attempted to withdraw from the plan, that David Brown had told the girls not to go through with killing Linda. And that too brought up a fine legal area. There was simple "withdrawal" and then there was "effective withdrawal." Had David Brown truly tried to terminate all of his liability in the alleged plot to kill his wife? Had he intended to remove himself totally from the situation?
"One area Mr. Brown seemed very enamored of—in his tapes at Ventura and in his interview with Mr. Newell," Robinson reminded the jury. "He seemed to repeat and to make it a point—even in a nonresponsive fashion—he'd say to Cinnamon [at CYA], 'But I told you not to do it!' 'Remember I told you, "Don't do it!" ' and then Cinnamon says, 'But that wasn't until the end.' And then he said— according to testimony from the girls in court—'Well, you girls don't have to do it, but if you love me . . .' Well, Mr. Brown's got to say he withdrew fro
m the plan."
Robinson pointed out that Brown was caught unaware by the existence of the tape made during his visits at Ventura. He had to concede something—but he would only concede what Newell already knew. "As he gets pressed against the wall ... he concedes, 'Well, I did mix up some medication —but I didn't try to kill her.' 'Yeah, I did help her with some suicide notes, but . . .'
"You have viable proof out of Mr. Brown's own mouth that he aided and abetted. . . . Mr. Brown now has to prove to you that he withdrew. . . . And there's a rule of law that addresses that, . . . Termination of liability of one who has aided and abetted a crime—he may end his responsibility by notifying the other parties of his intention to withdraw, and by doing everything in his power to prevent its commission."
Robinson's voice had only a slight sarcastic edge as he listed the steps David Brown claimed to have taken to stop the murder of his wife. He quoted Brown's grudging admissions as he asked if the jurors believed that the defendant effectively withdrew from the killing plans. " 'If you do it against my will, I'm going to leave.' . . . 'Okay, girls, I brought you up to this point, I told you how it's going to go down, I screened your notes for you—I showed you the best suicide note, I mixed the concoction for you—I got you all prepped, but now I'm saying, "I'm heading out. Don't do it. " '
"Is that everything in his power to prevent its commission? That's ridiculous. That's crazy. Would you leave the home of the woman you loved—the woman that he has said over and over how much he loved and cared for, how he would rather have died himself—and yet he's going to leave and not do a thing, knowing these girls are going to kill her, and let them do that? 'Hey, girls! Wake up, wake up, girls—I'm leaving—don't shoot anybody.' Is that an effective withdrawal? No."
The courtroom, if possible, was even quieter. It was 10:10 A.M., and Krystal Brown had, thank God, fallen sound asleep.
Robinson now went patiently over the "special circumstances" finding. The death concerned had to be intentional, and it had to be carried out for financial gain. Linda Brown's murder fit both these criteria. "It doesn't have to be the prime motive—just as long as money was one of them," Robinson said. "What was his mind-set at the time of the killing? . . . Did he expect to collect insurance? It's pretty clear. Mr. Brown had had several contacts with insurance agents. Within two years of her [Linda's] death, there were four policies totaling gross overinsurance—over a million dollars . . . but he had policies on her before, the defense will say, and he let those lapse. Why did he? We'll never know. But we do know that Patti Bailey testified he was talking about killing Linda as early as 1983.
"Then, in Brea, Patti says they really didn't talk about it for an extended time. Maybe things were going okay for a while. . . . The bottom line is that, within one month of her death, on February twenty-first, he gets her to sign up for a new policy—for four hundred grand. You don't have to be an insurance broker to know what that means. This is a classic case of a spouse taking insurance on the other spouse in the hope of gaining a windfall."
The morning break rolled around. The jurors could not see the clock; it was behind them. The rest of the listeners had not noticed the time.
Twenty minutes later, Robinson struck at the very heart of the conspiracy. "In the case in 1985, you have to remember something. When all the parties . . . live in the same home such as we have in Ocean Breeze, if you have to go beyond physical evidence—fingerprints, fibers—which are not apropos here, you have to ask, Who would be the one most plausible?. . . Who had the most compelling reasons to want Linda dead? Who had control over this peculiar family ... ? Who made the ultimate decisions as to the methodology of murder? Who was bright enough to master that? I think you know the answer to that. Who ultimately gained the most?
"I think if you answer all four of those questions, you have your man. . . .
"Mr. Brown's got no problem with grabbing whoever he can and using them as a shield to keep the heat off himself. . . . He's going to blame it on Cinnamon. . . . You read the letters he wrote to Patti while he was in jail. You're going to see David flip-flop all over the place. ... In that interview with Cinnamon, he's saying he's 'scared to death' to live with Patti. . . and with Jay Newell, David says he's even scared to throw Patti out . . . now, he's arrested and Patti has to be his friend, and so you'll see in the letters an attempt to brainwash Patti. These girls are dependent on him. . . . Can these girls control David Brown? It's like Edgar Bergen saying, 'Charlie McCarthy's running me all over. Look at these puppets. Look what they're doing to me.'"
Robinson asked the jury to remember everything they knew about the defendant. Given that knowledge, would it seem out of character to them that he would solicit murder? "Look at his degradation of women. He refers to them as various body parts. Look at his description of Patti Bailey. This was his wife. ... He became Patti's life support. He had to be there, she thought, in order for her to live. . . . When a man takes liberties with a child at an age as young and tender as that, over and over, would a girl not go to hell and back for him?
"This was the kingdom of Brown, his own little fiefdom! Some kingdom. Their family outings—they talked about killing Linda. This man—he's had one hell of a reign. He's juvenile and he's a genius."
But, Robinson pointed out, David Brown always had a "noble" reason for what he wanted done. He wanted to be out of jail because "Krystal needs him . . . I'm doing it because I'm innocent. . . I'm doing it because the DA is screwing me . . . I'm doing it because Linda's going to kill me . . . I'm doing it because the Mafia's after me."
Robinson was building to a grand finish, even as he systematically tore down David Brown's alibis for the times of all his crimes. He stressed that it did not matter how the tapes with Richard Steinhart were orchestrated; all that mattered was what David Brown believed and said on those murder-for-hire tapes. Even if David Brown truly believed he was being "railroaded," would an innocent man respond in this way?
David Brown was furious; a brick-red flush crawled up the back of his neck, and he frequently whispered urgently to Pohlson. When Robinson referred to him as "the Love God—David Brown," he smiled slightly, then realized as the gallery stifled giggles that he was being satirized. He was angry anyway because he had never had the chance to take the stand.
"What kind of man," Robinson continued, "leaves Cinnamon to languish, while he's living it up? A real creep— and that's being nice. He told Cinnamon, 'It's much harder on grown men in prison,' and he said to Patti, 'Just leave me out. Back me up and leave me out . . . like we'll do jail in shifts—when Krystal's old enough, we'll get her up here [to Ventura].'
"The coup de grace [was] on September 22, 1988—Jay Newell's interrogation. It's beyond all doubt. You get the true flavor of what Mr. Brown is all about. This is the pinnacle of truth. This decent human being who's running a home for wayward girls and they turned around and bit him ... the facade falls away. He's not dealing with little girls anymore—he's with streetwise investigators."
Robinson pointed out how Brown had given ground slowly to Jay Newell. He denied of course, giving Cinnamon a fatal potion, substituting a harmless concoction in his recall. "Look at page eighty-six," Robinson said, pointing to a transcript of that interview. " 'No, sir, I was not there at all. There was a glass—you guys probably found it ... it was Bayer aspirin . . . and soda.' And Mr. Newell asked him, 'You know what kind of pills would kill her, and how much, don't you?' And he says, I would think so by how my pills make me feel—yes. And I said, "Cinny, if you are half-serious—okay, fine." I mixed some Tylenol, some aspirin, and some baking soda because the baking soda—if you get enough in you—it will make you sick and I said, "It will look like someone your age tried to kill themselves," . . . and I said, "Cinny, I hope this is really a joke," and she said, "No, Daddy, it's no joke." '
". . . So he says," Robinson sneered, "'Okay—well, I gotta get out of here.'
"If you knew it [the 'potion'] had been made because she was going to kill Linda, and you
say this would help carry that out and make it look like she was going to commit suicide afterward . . . Look at page eighty-seven—'I told her if she was going to go through with this thing, regardless of what I said or what I did, I didn't want to be there.' Okay, if you're going through with this murder, I don't want to be here—I want to be gone.
"Is that an innocent man?
". . . He doesn't want it to happen, but, 'Here, honey— leave the note in the kitchen.' "
David Brown had admitted to every incriminating fact. Robinson reminded the jury that David always said "God, no" to questions about a sexual relationship with Patti, and how he slipped and told Newell that she talked in her sleep. He had to find a way to explain that goof to Newell, so he discussed the "Garfield nap attack" syndrome that Patti was prone to.
"They just held each other—because 'it gets to me real bad. It just tears me up.' " Robinson quoted. "It tears me up so much that. . . I've got this eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but it tears me up. It tears me up so bad I have to have sexual relations with Patti—but it tears me up about Linda. Boy, I miss her."
Robinson wound to a close with a searing look at Brown's consciousness of guilt.
"He's self-indulgent. It's me. Me. I. I. Money. Sex. Protection. . . . The plot to kill the prosecutor and the investigator, and all the tapes that are entered, show David Brown's consciousness of guilt. Innocent people don't go out in a premeditated fashion and take human lives. You tell me an innocent man would be involved in a horrendous act to murder his wife!"