If You Really Loved Me (53 page)

"Did you help?"

"Yes."

"Did you want her dead?"

". . . Yes . . ."

"Did you love your sister?"

"Yes—but I loved David more. He gave me love . . . material things . . . everything."

"Between the two—if you could only have one—who wins?"

"David."

Why had Cinnamon become involved? Patti explained that she herself couldn't kill Linda, and Cinnamon would probably only get a few months.

"Six months prior to Linda's death, were there active suggestions?"

"Yes, several. . . ."

"What were they?"

"Stabbing, suffocating, putting cyanide in her Coca-Cola. David would say what would be a 'good' or a 'bad' idea."

"Did you talk about paralyzing Linda?"

"That was my idea. Have David work on a car—up on the rack—and have Linda get under. ... He said it wouldn't stop her from wanting him dead. He asked me to be the one."

"Why you?"

"He couldn't take to see it. He couldn't stand to see it. He didn't
want to
see it."

Robinson's questions continued, each one leading to the next. David Brown sat slightly forward, watching his wife with steady eyes, his lips slightly parted. He looked like a lizard sitting on a rock, waiting for a bug to come into his line of sight. Patti never glanced at him. Without her glasses, she could not see him across the courtroom.
With
her glasses, she could barely see through the scratched lenses.

"Did you ever compete with Cinnamon to prove your love?"

"Yes—"

"Objection!"

"Sustained," McCartin said. "The answer is stricken."

Robinson rephrased the question and Patti was allowed to answer. "We'd try to outdo each other, to see who could come up with the best idea that David would approve of."

"Did you have to prove yourself?"

"Yes."

"Before Linda's actual death, were you awakened at night?"

"Yes. David woke me up about a month before that and said Linda had to be taken care of. We went down the hall to the bedroom. I took a pillow from the end of the bed. He gave me the gun. He told me to use the pillow to muffle the noise so the neighbors wouldn't hear it. I had no warning when I went to bed. He kept saying that I had to kill her before she killed him. It was after midnight—Linda was sleeping when I went in her room. I put the gun to her back and stood there for a few minutes. I couldn't do it."

"What did he say?"

"He wasn't mad—he said, 'It's okay.' "

One blazing truth became increasingly apparent as Patti Bailey testified. Although she had had no opportunity to talk with Cinnamon Brown alone in more than
five
years, her memory absolutely corroborated Cinnamon's.

After midnight on that cold March night, David
had
awakened both of them and told them it had to be done. He
had
given Cinnamon some "medicine. ... He left about five minutes later. He said, it doesn't have to be done, but if you girls love me, you'll do it.' "

"Did he ever say, 'Don't do it'?" Robinson asked.

"No. . . ."

Just as Cinnamon had done, Patti began to choke up with tears as the questions focused in on the actual murder. Again, her recall was the same as Cinnamon's.

"Did you murder your sister?" Robinson asked quietly.

"In my mind, I did." Patti Bailey wiped her eyes.

Jeoff Robinson held out a picture of a smiling Linda Brown and asked if this was Patti's sister.

She was sobbing. "Yes . . ."

Patti explained that she dealt with the murder for several years simply by putting it out of her mind. But the memory bubbled up to the surface. She had tried to kill herself three times.

"How?"

". . . By slicing my wrists, taking sleeping pills—'cause I couldn't live with what I did."

"Did you lie?"

"Yes."

Patti talked of the moment David returned from his "drive" to the beach. He was gone for an hour and forty-five minutes. "I told him Cinnamon had shot Linda. I told him not to go back to her room, and he said, 'Oh, my God.' He seemed kind of surprised, but relieved to have it over with. He didn't cry. He was calm. He told me to check the trailer for Cinnamon. ... I was scared and upset, and I didn't understand why he sent me to look in the trailer when I
knew
she was supposed to be in the doghouse."

Patti explained that David was very concerned that the police suspected him. He instructed her, if they were arrested too, that
she
was to take the blame and keep him out of it.

"He would have to go to jail. In the first thirty days, he was always afraid he was being followed, that someone was around. ... He was afraid to go to Cinnamon's trial. He was afraid that Cinnamon would tell on both of us during the trial."

"Did you lie at Cinnamon's trial?"

"He told me to say that Cinnamon was crazy, and to give short answers. He said Linda and Cinnamon had reasons for not getting along, and to make up stories of arguments and say Cinnamon was depressed. I was told to make Cinnamon sound 'a little bad and half-crazy.' I was to report to David during the trial and get instructions."

David had apparently told Patti to imply that Cinnamon had tried to shoot
her,
too. Robinson questioned Patti vigorously about lying. She had lied at Cinnamon's trial. Was she lying now?

"No."

With Cinnamon safely in prison, David forbade Patti to see her family, checked on her with a beeper system, and moved his parents in. He had married her, finally, "because he said he was dying and Krystal needed a legal stepmother."

After Cinnamon summoned David to the Ventura School twice in the summer of 1988, David had panicked. "[At home] we talked about getting arrested. . . . David said for me to take the blame. He'd get a lawyer for me, take care of Heather, and make sure I had everything I needed or wanted while I was in jail or prison. We were afraid. . . . David thought the house was bugged."

In the squad car on the way to the Orange County Courthouse on the morning of their arrest, Patti testified that David pointed at the floor and mouthed that they were bugged. "He said untrue things. He asked me, 'Who is the father of the baby?' I told him that he was."

In the courthouse, Patti had waited for hours while David was being interviewed by Jay Newell and Fred McLean. "When I was interviewed, I tried to cover up again."

"At some point, did you hear the tape of David's interview that day?"

"Yes."

"Were you upset?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I couldn't believe the things he said about me."

Patti Bailey responded to questions about where she thought she was going after she pleaded guilty, and how long she thought her sentence would be.

"I thought I was going to the women's prison in Frontera, but I went to CYA instead."

It was apparent that Patti was still confused. She seemed to think she was serving life in prison, that she would be moved from Ventura to Frontera when she was twenty-five.

Robinson found himself between a rock and a hard place. His witness was nonverbal, terrified, and depressed. She was not forthcoming, but she answered honestly. Even more than Cinnamon, Patti was a difficult witness. She needed the questions to help her focus. When Robinson tried to explain, McCartin, seemingly furious because Robinson was asking leading questions, excused the jury.

The judge turned to Pohlson. "Do you want a mistrial?"

A bit startled at first, Pohlson was on his feet, asking for a motion for mistrial because of Robinson's leading questions.

McCartin ordered Robinson to stop calling his witnesses by their first names. He denied the mistrial. "For now."

"No more questions," Robinson said angrily.

Many in the courtroom understood the need for his technique. The jurors, as all jurors are, were inscrutable.

After a recess, Pohlson rose to cross-examine Patti Bailey. "Mrs. Brown or Miss Bailey?" he asked.

"Miss Bailey."

Once again, Patti related the sordid sexual connection she had had to David Brown. In 1983, two years before she died, Linda had ordered David to take Patti back home.

"David came back and got me and said if Linda said no, they'd get a divorce."

"How did you feel?"

"I was grateful."

Patti recalled that she had "normal teenage problems" with her sister. "David told me that Linda was always threatening to throw me out."

Pohlson asked her to describe when she began having intercourse with her brother-in-law.

". . . The beginning of 1983."

"How often . :. ?"

"Weekly, sometimes twice a week, sometimes every other week."

Patti still evaded reality. She testified that she was sure Linda never suspected anything. Yes, she felt guilty, and she had asked David to stop—but then
he
made her feel guilty for asking. She had had sex with one of her brothers before moving in with David and Linda.

"Did you feel guilty about that?"

"No—my brother was forcing me."

"Did you resent it?"

"Yes. Sometimes."

David had been the first—before her brother. Even with David she sometimes felt forced to have sex. She had never told anyone about David—not until the preliminary hearing to this long-delayed trial.

As Patti spoke, she twisted rhythmically in her chair from side to side, and her body trembled more.

Was she in iove with David Brown when she moved into her sister's home?

"I was as in love as an eleven-year-old can be."

"Were you jealous of Linda?"

"Yes. ... He was giving her attention he wasn't giving me. Holding her, touching her, being affectionate."

"Were you jealous in 1980, 1981?"

Patti testified that she envied Linda her possessions, the
things
David gave his wife. "[Otherwise] David tried to be equal with all his girls—with me and Cinnamon."

But not like Linda. By 1982, Patti insisted that she had learned to accept things the way they were. She was the little sister who engaged in oral sex with her brother-in-law every time Linda wasn't around. David never forced her— physically.

Patti seemed to have no guile. She was a phlegmatic young woman who had yawning gaps in her education and socialization. She was David Brown's "product," his collector's prize. Her inflection was sometimes sardonic, very like David's. He had been her only model. It may have been difficult to
like
Patti—but not to pity her. Pohlson's questions drove her to retreat into a certain toughness.

She talked of Linda's second wedding to David.

"Did it bother you?"

"Yeah, it bothered me."

"You wished you could take her place?"

"Sure. I wanted to be David's wife."

The sexual contacts, of course, continued. "He was nice to me, but he was only affectionate when Linda left the room. He'd wink at me, blow me a kiss, give me a hug. We'd hold hands. She never caught us."

Patti still hoped to marry David. But her hopes had dimmed when Linda got pregnant a year after her second wedding. However, when Krystal was born on July 20, 1984, Patti felt David seemed very distant to Linda.

"I was scared that it would break up the family."

"Wasn't that what you wanted?" Pohlson asked.

"No."

"It
never
occurred to you that you could take her place?"

"No."

He wouldn't let her slide on that one. Finally, Patti answered, "Well, once or twice, but that wasn't the reason she was killed. It was to save David."

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."