VTC NEWS

In the early morning of March 19, 1985, police found Cinnamon Brown, 14, curled up in a fetal position on the floor of a red dog kennel behind her family home in Garden Grove, California.

David Brown finally got life in prison for convincing his daughter to kill her stepmom.

 

She had taken a cocktail of prescription medication and was sleeping sweating, drenched in urine and vomit. Clutched in her hand was a note, bound with a ribbon. It read: “Dear God, please forgive me. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

It’s probably safe to assume the letter referred to Brown’s stepmother, 23-year-old Linda Marie Bailey Brown.

Hours earlier, detectives found Linda in her bed with two bullets in her chest. There was a revolver on the floor.

There doesn’t seem to be much mystery surrounding the people in this whore. It has all the hallmarks of being another case of age-old tensions between a second wife and first family. Several people, including the dead woman’s husband and sister, told of recent frictions between the two. However, other friends and acquaintances say that Cinnamon and Linda get along well, as Ann Rule wrote in her book about the case, “If You Really Love Me.”

During Cinnamon’s trial, her lawyers frantically tried to defend themselves. But in September 1986, the judge found her sober and guilty, handed her a severe sentence ranging from 27 to life, and sent her to a reformatory.

There she stayed, quietly doing the school computer work, exercising, making stitches and waiting. When asked about the murder, her definite answer was that she didn’t remember anything.

Cinnamon Brown gives tearful testimony, explaining how her dad put her up to killing stepmom Linda Marie Bailey Brown

 

To those who saw her in prison, it seemed inconceivable that this gentle child could commit such a crime.

An investigator from the district attorney’s office, Jay Newell, felt the same way. He didn’t think this girl could be a cold-blooded killer. He sensed that something was amiss in the case. Even after she was kicked out and the case seemed closed, he continued to dig.

He’s suspicious of David Brown, Cinnamon’s father and Linda’s husband, a thriving business geek. After his daughter’s trial, Brown returned to his lavish lifestyle – luxury homes and a fleet of luxury cars – funded by $835,000 from life insurance policies he bought for his daughter. his wife.

He also made the move to raise eyebrows when he married the teenage sister of his dead wife, Patti, even before Cinnamon’s trial was complete.

Business success aside, Brown’s personal life has been a turbulent one. Always suffering from some kind of illness, he had medicine cabinets filled with pills. Then there are his wives. There will be six rides down the aisle, two of them with Linda Marie. He met her and her sisters while he was living next door to the Baileys, a single mother and 11 children.

Brown draws his attention to the clan by pretending to have cancer and asking if the girls can come and help him keep his house tidy.

Patti Bailey, the younger sister of Linda Marie Bailey Brown, who married David Brown after her sister was killed.

In the early 1980s, Linda and David were married, divorced, and remarried, and were living in a comfortable home in Garden Grove, with Cinnamon, his daughter from another marriage, and Patti. Linda’s sister has moved in to escape the turmoil of her family home. Immediately he began to molest her. Craving for attention, she’ll later say he made her feel special.

Around 1983, Brown began to suggest to the two girls that Linda and her twin brother were plotting to kill him for money. A master of manipulation, he convinces the girls that the only way he can feel safe is to eliminate his enemies.

With all his ailments, Brown says he’s too weak to do it on his own. Besides, since they were teenagers, it made the most sense for one of the girls to take a photo. A young inmate is likely to spend very little time in prison.

His ploy is a tried and true psychological blackmail – “If you love me, you’ll do this for me.”

The murder plan has become a family affair between father, daughter and sister-in-law. Cinnamon, as the youngest, was chosen to pull the trigger. Her father assured her that, as a child, the only punishment she would receive would be light, possibly a few sessions with a psychologist.

Even if that turns out to be untrue, and even if she faces a lifetime behind bars, she’s still guarding their secret. But when she learned, through Newell, that her father was living on high and was married to her accomplice, she decided it was time to talk.

After his arrest, Brown behaved properly. First, he tries to put the blame on Patti. He then tries to bribe a fellow inmate to kill Patti and two members of the DA office. He doesn’t realize that the offer to “make it worth your time” is for an undercover cop.

He went to court in 1990 and got life.

Patti, a prominent witness at her husband’s trial, pleaded guilty, spent several years in a reformatory, and married a warden when she was released.

Freed in 1992, Cinnamon managed to build a normal life, although the public’s fascination with the case still kept an eye on the public in books and a television miniseries. Tragedy struck her life again, Rule wrote, when her husband committed suicide.