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 La.s.seter]

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 housea"'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 thisa"you guys hada"" 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 ablea"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 fathera"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 s.h.i.t 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 a.s.sured Cinnamon that Patti had left his home long before.

Patti watched David's annoyance and gradually changed her story. Yes, she had lefta"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 interesta"that waya"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 isa"not for what he can give me. I love him for what he is, but seea"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 likea"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 thena"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 moutha""

"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 s.e.x 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 earneda"since August first? One hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. Why do I need insurance money? Cinny, my Data Recovery business account hasa"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 didn'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 alla"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.

"Yes." David warmed to the story. "Too many weird things have happened since this all happened. I know somebody is out to get me. There's a good possibility that my liver was poisoned. Somebody's tried to poison me since this happened."

Patti nodded. "It happened [David's alleged liver failure] less than two months afterwards and they say that it takes a while for it to get there [to the liver]."

"But anyway, yeaha"Linda may have poisoned me," David said almost cheerfully. "That's one of the other things they told me. She might have poisoned me. Alan might have poisoned me. But you ask about why she's still there. [He gestured toward Patti.] I am scared s.h.i.tless. Every day, I'm scared somebody or something is going to kill mea"every day because of Alan . . . Alan has maintained his threats. Larry is stilla"now he came back from Missouri and I've been trembling like a leaf and I wish Betsy was on your visiting list. She'd come in here and she'd tell you that sometimes I even sit there and cry."

David explained that he had seen three psychiatrists since the murder. The only reason he dated women was because he was terrified all the time. He was depressed. "Because I'm worried about you in here. I want you home."

The stories rattled on for another half an hour. Solutions came to David's mind and spun off like drops of water from a Frisbee. But "honest to G.o.d," David had no idea who had killed Linda. His memory was gone. He was not strong enough for prison, but he would be glad to let Patti confess.

When Patti and Krystal headed off for the rest rooms, David's tone with his daughter became confidential. "I know what it's like for you," he told Cinnamon.

"No. . .," she said slowly. "You can probably imagine what it's like for me, but you don't know what it's really like."

"Cinnamon, you know what I mean. I've always loved you so much. I never wanted anything bad to happen to you. .. . Cinny, if you did do it, you did it because you love me just as much as I love you."

"But I didn't do it."

"I believe you.... You were always too lovable, you know. You were always too funny and cute . . . like me."

"Don't push it."

"You were. You were always funny. You like cracking jokes and doing things like I do. You didn't have a bone in your body that would allow you to hurt anyone. That's why I've always been convinced that it had to have been somebody thinking it was me.

"I want your honest opinion. From talking to her [Patti] just now, could she have done it?

"You've had me sitting on hot charcoals since you told me that over there on the gra.s.s," David said. "You've had me scared to death. I told Mother and Dad what you and I talked about and they've been scared to death. They've been trying to stay over at the new house as much as they can because they're afraid she's going to try to do me now. They think she's capable of it. Both of them do."

It made her dizzy. Her father going round and round with the same old lines. The same old suspects. The same old alibis. But then he always contradicted himself.

He trusted Patti. No, he was "scared to death" that Patti was trying to kill him.

It was Larrya"or Alan. No, he wasn't sure.

He remembered nothing. He remembered exactly what he had told them.

His father was capable of killing. No, his father and mother were scared to death of Patti.

All Cinnamon wanted from him was the truth. If he told the truth, and if Patti told the truth, then she could tell the truth. But her father made jokes when the truth came too close, and he wasn't going to change. He thought he could just keep giving her things and never really think about her; he didn't care if she was locked up forever.

Cinnamon walked with him and Patti and Krystal out to see Grandma Brown. She smiled faintly at Manuela's gift of a teddy bear. And when they said good-bye, she winced as her father hugged her tightlya"so tightly that she wondered if he felt the wire. Cinnamon had seen a camera pointed at them, just a flicker, just once. She knew Walt Robbins was in there in the guard tower. Had her father seen him? If he had, he said nothing. But he was so full of bulls.h.i.t anyway, who could tell?

She hoped that Jay Newell had gotten enough information. There had been so many words. Maybe too many. Would it all come out like garbage?

Patti had said she would come in here. She said she felt like the song said: "I'll do anything for you, anything for you . .."

But she wouldn't. It was all part of her father's game playing, and Patti would say whatever he wanted her to say. Just like always, Patti would do whatever he wanted her to do.

And her father was ready to betray Patti in the blink of an eye.

When she went back to the room where Jay Newell was monitoring the tapes, she saw him smiling at her. "Did you hear me trying to get him over here? Did you?"

"Yeah. You did a good job. They tried to get their story together pretty good."

He wouldn't know if he had enough until he got back to Santa Ana and listened to the tapes with Robinson.

But he had a good feeling.

To builda"or in this instance, to rebuilda"a murder case, prosecutors and detectives seek to prove motive, means, and MO (modus operandi), the three vital Ms of murder. And then they need both circ.u.mstantial and direct evidence to substantiate their case. Cinnamon had been convicted princ.i.p.ally upon her own confession to the medical student Kim Hicks.

Now Jeoff Robinson and Jay Newell would have to come back double strength to open a long-dead case. Their chief witness would be a co-conspirator, not the witness of choice. It was legally tricky to use the testimony of a co-conspirator in a court of law. In order to allow Cinnamon's testimonya" which would be essential to convict David Brown and/or Patti Baileya"there had to be independent corroboration of what she said. It could be physical evidencea"a fingerprint, a DNA matcha"but not in this case. Since the three people allegedly involved had all lived in the same house, the usual physical evidence was worthless.

However, statements from the two suspects still walking free could be corroborative too. If the long, long tapes recorded surrept.i.tiously during visitors' hours at Ventura School had enough in them to match what Cinnamon had told Jay Newell, Jeoff Robinson could hope to reopen the case and ask for arrest warrants.

Over and over, Robinson and Newell listened to the tapes. Each playing brought forth another nuance. Robinson's grin grew broader. There was no going back now. All unaware, Patti and David had corroborated Cinnamon's storya"even as they struggled to cover up their involvement.

But Robinson would not rush this case. He and Newell brainstormed until they were sick of the sound of each other's voice.

"How could we make it better?" Newell recalled. "We kept asking each other that. What could we add to our case to make it stronger? There was no point in doing any more tapes at Ventura. We felt we had as much as we were going to get from David and Patti.

"It finally came down to the only thing that could happen to improve it would be to have either David or Patti point a finger at the other, and that wasn't likely to happen until we could arrest them and separate them."

Motive for David and Patti was much stronger than it had been for Cinnamon. l.u.s.t. David had wanted Patti's youth, and her taped statements certainly showed she had coveted him for a long time. There was little doubt they had had a baby together.

Since David was by far the more pragmatic of the two suspects, and to put it bluntly, the greediest, a second and more pressing motive attached to him. Financial gain. He had always said that insurance was meant to be used, and he had used it. Payoffs on cars, on all-terrain vehicles, on computers, on medical and emotional damage, had all enhanced his fortune. No one would ever really know just how many claims he had collected on, given the peculiar glitches that appeared in his files in insurance company computers.

l.u.s.t and greed.

Two motives are always better than one.

Fred McLean worked the insurance angle, tracking down the agents who had sold David and Linda the life insurance that had paid off so handsomely after Linda's murder.

He found that there had been no less than four policies insuring Linda Brown's life at the time of her death! Why four? McLean learned that Linda Marie Brown, in her early twenties, a housewife without even a high school education, would not have been accepted by any one company for say, a million dollars' worth of insurance. Underwriters check policy applications carefully and advise acceptance and refusal of applications based on many factors and statistical averaging. To insure an applicant such as Linda Brown for a million dollars would be ridiculous. She would be considered "overinsured."