If You Really Loved Me (15 page)

"After reviewing the police reports and psychological evaluation by Dr. Howell," Forgette asked, "and in light of your direct examination of the minor, were you able to reach any diagnostic impressions?"

"Yes, sir, I was. . . . My impression at that time was that she was suffering from a major depression, recurrent type."

Dr. Anderson also felt that this major depression gripped Cinnamon at the time of the shooting, and that it "interfered with her ability to know the quality of her actions and also to know the difference between right and wrong."

The psychiatrist had interviewed—or
attempted
to interview Cinnamon once more—on July 28. "She did not recall having seen me before," he testified. "She did not recall telling me about the shooting of her stepmother. . . . She did, however, review with me her personal history materials . . . but she denied any suicide attempts. . . . My feeling was she had developed this psychogenic amnesia to protect herself from feeling more depressed or to protect her from going into a psychotic state."

Dr. Anderson modified—or rather
expanded
—his diagnosis of Cinnamon Brown after this second half-hour consultation. "I felt that she was suffering from a disassociative disorder, a psychogenic amnesia type with a history of major depression, recurrent."

Mike Maguire cross-examined Dr. Anderson for half the morning and into the afternoon. "Isn't it a fact, Doctor, that depression in and of itself doesn't cause people to lose sight of what is right and what is wrong?"

"That is correct."

"And in this case, because of what Cinnamon told you, you feel her depression caused her to lose sight of what was right and what was wrong?"

"On the basis of what she told me and the battery of reports indicating the severity of the depression, I would say it's of such severity to interfere with her ability to know right from wrong."

They worried the question, back and forth, and neither witness nor prosecutor would budge.

In the ensuing cross- and redirect examination of Seawright Anderson, many psychological terms were tossed around. Cinnamon was more confused than ever. She had already been adjudged a killer. Now, her own attorney said that, under the law, she was insane, The prosecutor said she was not. "Cinnamon is not now insane, nor was she insane March nineteenth when she pulled the trigger twice to shoot Linda Brown."

She didn't know what any of it meant.

What it meant, of course, was that if Judge Fitzgerald agreed with Forgette and found her mentally ill, Cinnamon would receive treatment. If he agreed with Mike Maguire, she would go to prison.

Judge Fitzgerald ruled against Forgette. In his estimation, Cinnamon Brown was quite sane. He said he would sentence her on September 13.

Cinnamon Brown appeared for sentencing on Friday, the thirteenth of September. She was very pale and trembled as she sat next to Al Forgette. Where she had seemed only immensely sad during both phases of her trial, she now appeared shaken. It was as if she had suddenly hit a wall—an unexpected wall. Mr. Forgette had told her all the things that might happen, but she had never thought it would be this.

Jay Newell glanced around the courtroom to see who might have had reason to sit in on this sentencing. It hadn't gotten more than a back-section story in the
Orange County Register,
and less in the
Los Angeles Times.

Brenda Sands was there, looking as agonized as Cinnamon, and David's sister Susan Salcido. Cinnamon's grandfather, Arthur Brown, was there. And behind Brenda,
at long last,
Newell saw the elusive David Arnold Brown. He wondered what the real reason was that Brown had been "too sick" to come to Cinnamon's trial. Had he been afraid of testifying? Did he have information that would have made it look worse for his daughter? It didn't matter now; the trial was over.

As Newell covertly studied the squat, dark-haired man, he saw Brown's hand suddenly dart out and tug at his ex-wife's hair. Brenda lifted her hand and brushed him away like a pesky fly. No, he wasn't that. He was like a kid in school, Newell thought, as he saw that Brown was also kicking the back of Brenda's chair with his foot. He was like a naughty kid pulling the braids of a girl he had a crush on, even as his own daughter was being sentenced to prison for murder.

David Brown was smiling. A sly, happy smile.

Newell was mystified—and intrigued.

As Brown reached out again to tease Brenda, Judge Fitzgerald described the slaying of Linda Marie Brown as a heinous act that he deplored. Cinnamon looked at Fitzgerald. He was asking her if she understood the procedure for her sentencing. She shook her head slightly and her voice broke as she said, "I don't understand."

Why was she going to be sentenced? Why wasn't she going home?

Tears slipped from Cinnamon's eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She stood woodenly and waited.

"I sentence you to serve twenty-seven years to life. ..."

Cinnamon swayed. Brenda gasped.

Neither one of them really heard the rest of what the judge had to say. It was enough that they had just heard that Cinnamon, fifteen years old, had been sentenced to be in prison at least until she was forty-two years old, maybe longer.

"My hope is that you progress," Judge Fitzgerald was saying. "And don't have to serve the maximum term." He recommended that Cinnamon be imprisoned at the California Youth Authority facility—Ventura School—where she could receive psychiatric treatment and be housed with girls her own age.

Brenda Sands left the courtroom in tears.

Mike Maguire explained to the press that the "target time" for youthful offenders in California was, historically, about six years. That meant that Cinnamon might be out when she was twenty or twenty-one. But it wasn't a given.

Cinnamon didn't hear that explanation nor did she understand that she probably wouldn't really be in prison for the rest of her life. It wouldn't have mattered. When you are fifteen, six years is a lifetime anyway.

She looked around for her father, but he was gone.

The case file in the Orange County DA's office filled one sturdy cardboard file box and half of another. The Brown case was adjudicated now; it would go down into the vault. There were always other cases to work, so many new cases they tumbled over each other. No time to look back on and ponder this strange story of Cinnamon Darlene Brown and her dead stepmother.

With Cinnamon's sentencing, Garden Grove Case 85-11342 was closed. There was no viable argument for reworking a case where both evidence and confession had convicted a killer. The fact that the killer was a sweet-faced fourteen-year-old girl was tragic, but justice ground on in Orange County, barely skipping a beat.

It was officially over.

* * *

Cinnamon Brown had been committed to the Ventura School in Camarillo, placed under the jurisdiction of the California Youth Authority. She would never again attend a public high school, nor would she grow up through her teen years with her friends. A chunk of her young life, a very important chunk, had been amputated. Instead, on October 17, 1985, she was taken from the Orange County Juvenile Hall and driven eighty miles north to the Ventura School in Camarillo. Cinnamon, who had always loved the beach, would be close enough to the Pacific Ocean to smell the salt spray when the wind changed in the afternoon, but she would not get to sunbathe on the beach.

Home would be so far away that it might as well have been ten thousand miles. But then, Cinnamon had not really had a home she could count on for a long time; she always felt like an appendage, a tagalong to whichever family she was living with, an interloper. Whichever home she was in, Brenda's or David's, she had always felt torn, disloyal to the absent parent.

At first, she was only surprised to find herself in prison. Her being there had to be a mistake. And then she was stunned, disbelieving. And so alone. She tried to convince herself that she would not be at the Ventura School for very long; her father had always promised her he would take care of her, and she trusted in his assurances.

She could have visitors on every other Saturday after she was settled into her cottage, into the routine of the Ventura School. She hoped her father would come up so she could talk to him and get a hug. She hoped he would bring Krystal. She hoped Brenda could borrow a car and come up with Penelope. She missed her baby sister. She missed both her baby sisters.

She had a new fear now, no matter how irrational it might seem. She was scared to death that everyone would just forget about her.

PART TWO

The
Investigation

12

T
here was
one
man who had not forgotten Cinnamon. For some reason, Jay Newell could not get her out of his mind. He knew full well the Brown file was about to gather dust. That was the way it went, the inexorable progression from the investigation to the intensity of a trial to oblivion. But Newell simply could not let go of it. There was no use trying. He looked at his own working file and made up his mind. He put the well-worn binders, transcripts, tape recordings, and videotapes into his desk drawer, close by, where he could pull them out whenever he wanted. He was not satisfied that the whole truth had ever come to light.

Fred McLean felt the same way. He always had. Something was "hinky." It only reinforced both detectives' sense of an unfinished case when McLean had run into Susan Salcido, David Brown's thirty-four-year-old sister, in the parking lot after Cinnamon's sentencing. Brenda Sands was with her and introduced Susan to the detective.

"I almost didn't come today," Susan said. "I did it for Cinnamon. I haven't had much to do with David for a long time—he was really cruel to one of our brothers. David can be mean. I was the one who apologized, finally," Salcido said, as Brenda Sands added, "David
never
apologizes to anyone."

"You know," Susan said, "the last time I talked to Linda was on the day after Valentine's Day—over at their house on Ocean Breeze. Alan Bailey was there too that day, and he was ticked off about something—I can't even remember what it was. Alan gets ticked off easy. Something David had done to him, or he thought David had done to him.

"I remember what Linda said, probably because that was the
last
time I ever saw her. Linda wasn't happy; she was miserable. She said she and David were fighting a lot, that they'd been having trouble for a long time, although it was better for a while after Krystal was born."

Susan said she asked if Cinnamon's living with the family was the main source of trouble, but Linda had assured Susan that she got along fine with Cinnamon.

Cinnamon wasn't the problem.

"The only reason Cinnamon was living in the trailer," Susan said, "was because Patti wanted her own room in the house and didn't want Cinnamon sharing. Patti always got her way with David."

Susan told McLean that Linda had actually seemed concerned that Patti might be dangerous. When Susan had demurred, surprised, Linda gave examples. "Linda told me that neither she nor David allowed Patti to take care of the baby. She was afraid Patti would hurt Krystal. Linda told me that Patti had somehow killed a puppy that belonged to Cinnamon. I'm not sure just how that happened, but she was very worried about Patti's behavior. She said Patti was acting strange, and she thought maybe she was anorexic. Linda thought Patti was going to commit suicide."

"Was that a surprise to you?" McLean asked, and Susan shook her head. "Patti is kind of strange."

She had noticed that Patti looked smug when Cinny got in trouble. She was competitive with Cinny. Now, Patti wouldn't have to share her home with either Linda or Cinnamon.

The three of them had stood in the parking lot across from the courthouse, the hot August sun beating down on them. Brenda looked dazed, not yet able to comprehend that her child had just been sentenced to life in prison. She nodded and agreed with her ex-sister-in-law's assessments of Patti Bailey.

"Since Linda died, Patti and David are inseparable," Susan Salcido confided. "They leave the baby with my parents and they're gone all day."

And then Susan Salcido reported that David also had rushed to warn her only hours after the murder—just as he had warned Brenda—that she was
not
to describe Cinnamon as normal when the police asked. If questioned, she was to say that Cinnamon was disturbed, possibly suicidal.

"Why?"
McLean asked.

Salcido didn't know—whether it was because David hoped an insanity plea would save Cinny from going to prison, or for his own reasons. David
had
always liked to orchestrate events, molding them and changing them to suit him.

"All I really know is our whole family thinks it's peculiar that Patti still lives with David. They go everywhere together. It doesn't seem right, letting my mother have all the care of Krystal while they go off alone. Patti's seventeen. She should be home with her own family."

McLean and Newell had no official place to go with their misgivings about the Cinnamon Brown case. Because that was all they had—hunches.
Feelings.
A sense that justice had not been served, or at best partially served. But the law demands facts, direct evidence, witnesses, confessions—a reasonable, orderly case built step by step. And Newell and McLean didn't have any of those. During the investigation and Cinnamon's trial, they felt they had come to know her a little, although they were a long way from understanding her. The person who eluded them completely was her father.

Who
was
David Arnold Brown?

He had told investigators only the most cursory details about his life and seemed disinclined to tell them anything more. They knew he was wealthy, that he owned Data Recovery and claimed to be a computer genius, that his health was fragile, and that he seemed to associate almost exclusively with his family.

There was nothing to link David Brown to the murder of Linda Brown. It had seemed a bit odd to McLean and Newell that a man so upset by an argument with his wife should have remembered his whereabouts so precisely. A skeptic—or a detective—might even deduce that Brown had intentionally established an alibi. But that was only a feeling, not solid evidence. Police investigations had checked out Brown's story; he was, indeed, where he said he was at the time Linda died. In the
official
eyes of the law, Brown was a law-abiding citizen. He had no criminal record—not with the California Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information, nor with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Crime Information Center. McLean had checked, and Newell had checked.

David Brown was clean.

McLean had to let it go, at least for the moment; he had other duties. Newell
could not
let it go, even though he wasn't even sure what he was looking for. Newell was a man born to ferret out things hidden, a low-key bulldog who refused to accept easy solutions. He worried a case, turning it over and over, kept coming back to it until
he
was satisfied that he had discerned every facet of the truth.

Jay Newell didn't grow up in a cop's family; his dad was a school custodian in La Habra, and Jay and his two sisters had come with their folks from Oklahoma to Norwalk, California. There, young Jay's hero was a Los Angeles County deputy who lived across the street and took the time to talk to neighborhood kids and listen to their problems.

When Newell got out of the army in 1971, he signed up with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office. The first assignment for rookies just out of the Academy was working in the jails, not the favorite duty for most cops. "If you want to get through the jail assignment quick," Newell explained, "you pick the toughest jail you can. That's what I did. I volunteered for the old HOJJ—the Hall of Justice Jail in downtown Los Angeles."

The HOJJ was full of difficult prisoners, including Charles Manson and his followers, who were housed there during their marathon trials. Newell was startled to see what a diminutive man Manson was, and how, even locked up, he had a mesmerizing effect on young prisoners. The man who should have been reviled was, instead, idolized. Studying Manson taught Newell a great deal about charismatic manipulators. "He had a whole block of cells to himself—to keep him isolated—but some of the other prisoners would pass by him when they were transferred in or out. They polished his shoes for him; they would take his jail clothes and put creases just right in them—anything to please him," Newell recalled, shaking his head. "He had a creepy kind of
power,"

In many ways, working the Hall of Justice Jail was far more dangerous for rookie deputies than being on the streets. Simply locking down the jail for the night could be risky. "All the cell doors slammed shut at once," Newell remembered. "We'd yell, 'Comin' closed!' to warn the prisoners to step away from the doors. But some of them would toss blankets in the doorway, and that made the handle the deputy was pulling fly back and smack into him hard. Luckily, I was in and out quickly, but I learned a lot in the process."

Next, Newell went to patrol. He was out on the road only three days when he was involved in a shoot-out. Two suspects were wounded, but Newell and his partner emerged unscathed.

He liked police work, the variety of details a street cop deals with, and yet it was the
continuing
investigation of crimes that truly fascinated him. As a patrolman, he only got to see the beginning of a case, and then he had to hand it reluctantly over to the detectives for follow-up. It left him wanting more. He saw only the surface, when everything in him wanted to dig deeper. In the hierarchy of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office, it can take a long time to move up into the detective unit, and Newell chafed at the wait. After eight years with the Sheriffs Office, he resigned and signed on with the Orange County District Attorney's Office as an
investigator.

Newell's first assignments were hardly the stuff of mystery thrillers. He worked in the Family Support Division, then investigated welfare fraud for a year. By 1981, he had moved into the Juvenile Division where he worked juvenile-related homicide cases and tried to stem the damage from a growing problem: gangs. Orange County saw the unwelcome emergence of some of the first of the gangs that would soon plague the West Coast, and Newell had his baptism of fire. He investigated
forty-seven
gang-related homicides. He had wanted into the thick of criminal investigation, and he got his wish. Crips. Bloods. Skinheads. Newell played a key role in producing training films that taught cops how to deal with the skinheads and the ethnic gangs that were proliferating. He got along with the gangs—as much as any cop could.

Cinnamon Brown was no gang member. She
was
a convicted juvenile homicide offender. Why couldn't Newell just let go of her case? It was a question with no answer, only a gnawing gut instinct. Newell's curiosity about her father was an itch that demanded scratching.

After the murder of Linda Brown, David Arnold Brown told anyone who would listen that he was a man torn, caught between his grief over the loss of his wife, pity for his motherless baby, and concern for his firstborn child. Cinnamon was criminally responsible for making Krystal a half-orphan, he said forlornly, and that fact would fill him with wrenching ambivalence for the rest of his life. Seeing Cinnamon reminded Brown of the tragedy and of her participation. But he couldn't just walk away from his daughter. She needed him now more than she ever had. He vowed to visit her as often as his health permitted.

Brown had always called Cinnamon "Cinny" and stressed to police that there was an extremely strong bond between them, even during those times she was living with her mother. He bemoaned the fact that she had stubbornly resisted when he tried to get her into counseling. He blamed himself, he said, for not trying harder to get help for Cinnamon. But he accepted the fact that his fourteen-year-old daughter had murdered his beloved, perfect wife.

When he could take the time from other investigations, Jay Newell began to dig beneath the surface of David Brown's life, locating any number of people who were quite willing to fill in a chink here and a missing space in time there. He discovered that David Brown was something of a ladies' man. Linda had been his fifth wife. Newell also located a dozen or more women Brown had been involved with
between
marriages. He was neither tall nor handsome, but it hadn't seemed to hurt him with women. As one of Linda and Patti's relatives said graphically, "He always got the beauties. None of David's women were dog meat."

Newell found that David's existence had been marked by soaring peaks and desolate valleys. Still, all things considered, he had been quite successful—until Linda's murder. He bragged that he had a talent for survival, along with an innate intelligence and acquired skill. The numerous statues and sketches of birds in the Ocean Breeze Drive house were David's. Family members told Newell that David identified with the phoenix, the mythic bird rising from the ashes of disaster to soar again. He even wore a symbolic pendant. His personal jeweler had created the image of a phoenix just as Brown ordered it, with its wings down—not spread—as it rose with ease from "flames" formed of yellow and orange topaz. The custom piece cost $1,500.

David Brown liked to say that in the end, like the phoenix, he always won.

No one could argue that David was not a high achiever, a middle child who had struggled to break out of the pack of many children in a family with limited income. Perhaps that was why prestige and wealth mattered so much to him. And why he detested authority figures. Perhaps it was his mother's control over him when he was a child that made David so resistant to anyone's telling him what to do.