If You Really Loved Me (47 page)

Steinhart was a fascinating roommate. "His stories were great," Newell recalled. "We didn't buy them all, but they kept us entertained. He'd told us he worked as Jerry Lewis's bodyguard, and we kind of doubted that one. And then, sure enough, we were waiting for Sunday brunch in the hotel and Richard sees some guy in line and waves him over. The guy's diamond-studded, and he greets Richard like an old buddy.
Then
he pulls out pictures of Richard and Jerry Lewis!"

Borris and Newell wore "soft clothes" and blended easily into Steinhart's lifestyle. So well, in fact, that Deputy DA Tom Borris was offered a chance to buy the "best Thai sticks you've ever had" by a man who sat on a stool down the bar. Newell, head of the Narcotics Enforcement Team, choked on that one, but he let it go by.

"We had a good time, considering," Newell remembered. "But it was time to close it down. I wanted to be home with my family, and David was demanding action on his 'hits.'"

It was Friday, February 10, 1989.

Steinhart assured David that it was all coming down on Monday, the 13th, or Tuesday. Tom Brown was to deliver the final payment of $ 11,000
after
David got word that the first part of the "job" was done. Animal would then head off on his own, and Steinhart would start working on passports and ID for David.

"That's cool," Steinhart promised David. "I'm ready . . . we're ready."

"Okay."

"I miss you," Steinhart threw out.

"I miss the hell out of you, Richard. God damn it. I don't believe how much I love you!"

"... I don't think we'll be needing that other five grand— for the escape," Steinhart said. "I think if we get rid of Patti and the two cops, and all your problems, you're going to beat this thing and walk anyway."

"That's what I'm counting on ... we can do everything, no hiding man—that's what I'm so fucking excited about. ... I don't know if I can love you any more except for cruising on a bike ought to give me a new feeling. ... I really do miss you, Fat Bo."

"Fat Bo?' Steinhart laughed. "Okay. You're Hip Bo, Irv's Rat Bo, I'm Fat Bo—the Bo Brothers."

For a moment there, Newell sensed that David Brown was having more fun being one of the boys in jail than he had ever had in his life. But there was a yawning hole where David should have had some vestige of conscience. He had none at all. He was having such a great time as he awaited news of at least three cold-blooded murders.

Patti Bailey, his wife, the mother of his infant child, the woman who had given up everything for the love of him, was about to "back up on a knife,"

At least, David believed she was.

David chafed at the wait over the weekend. He called Steinhart every time he got a free phone. On Monday, he called Steinhart at eight-thirty in the morning. "Hello," he said quietly, waiting.

"Hey, David!" Steinhart crowed. "David, it's
done!"

"Say what?"

"I'm done. We're done. We're fucking done. Animal is in the garage right now—torching the pieces; he's melting the fuckers down right now. How did we do, huh?"

"You did great. ..." David's voice was somehow hollow.

"Is that hot, or what?"

"Yeah, it's hot."

"Hey, man, how did we do, huh?"

"Wonderful. You're a good man."

"Wonderful?
Is that all?"

David whispered that he was in a crowded area; people could be listening. His voice was flat as he listened to Steinhart describe the "murders" of Jay Newell and Jeoff Robinson. Steinhart said he even had Polaroids to show David. That frightened David. He wanted the Polaroids burned.

"Ah, man, we just walked in—I can't believe your timing."

"Shit, buy yourself an extra pizza on me!" David said.

"... It went like clockwork. Bang! Bang! Right in the back of the head—both of them. Capped 'em both. I didn't have a chance to give them any last words from you though."

". . . That's all right," David stammered.

Steinhart thought the news should hit the papers soon— since the "hits" had happened right out in public. As soon as he and Animal collected the $ 11,000 from Tom, they would give the word on Patti.

"This is so fucking good, man, you won't believe it. They went so good."

"I love you," David said wanly.

And now, Steinhart needed the rest of the directions to the desert treasure. Hadn't he proved how loyal he could be?

Apparently so.

"You know where the left turn is?" David began.

"Yeah."

"You can only go left unless they've dumped some more development out there in the last couple of years. Turn left on that street at the landmark. You will pass the wash. It's less visible on the left than it is on the right. You're going to be headed north, okay? On the far side of the wash—on the right—it's like five, six foot high. Okay, you want to take the north side of the wash. Find a path up there. You will go exactly—on my odometer on a Nissan pickup—one and three-quarter miles. Okay. Then you head exactly north again. You may want a small compass for that because I made sure I was heading due north."

"Exactly north?"

"Exactly one and three-quarter miles. Okay, three-eighths of a mile or thereabouts, you'll see a boulder and a yucca tree. I call it a boulder because it's a heavy motherfucker, probably three—maximum four—feet around."

"Okay."

"Um—it's exactly under the boulder. . . . It's on property I owned at one time, but I made sure it's near a survey marker so if anybody was going to fence it in, they wouldn't have any reason to dig or move that boulder."

"Is your property close by this landmark?"

"It's on the other side of the street that you use to get to the wash."

"What's your address?"

David didn't remember the street name, nor did he remember the numbers. "It's five digits long. It's eight eight eight. . . something." The property address didn't matter; the yucca tree and the boulder did.

David Brown's fortune was buried beneath that boulder. He was willing to share it now with Richard Steinhart. "God, I love you, Richard."

"I love you, too. Anything else I need to know?"

"I did think of something last night that I was going to warn you about."

"Which was what?"

"But apparently you didn't need it."

"Well, what was it anyway?"

"The investigator was armed."

Now
David told him. Had David ever intended for Steinhart to survive the two hits? He had forgotten a fairly vital piece of information.

Steinhart's answer was unruffled. "Oh, yeah—they both were. One had one in his briefcase, and one had one on him."

"I never noticed on the attorney."

"Well, I'll tell you what," Steinhart said sardonically. "It don't matter now, does it?"

It was raining and hailing and the parking lot at Bennigan's in Westminster was almost empty as Richard Steinhart and Det. Bob "Animal" Moran waited in their Camaro for Tom Brown's blue Ford Escort to turn in. At ten-twenty
A.M
., David's older brother arrived. He remained seated behind the wheel as he handed over the last payment: $11,000 of David's money for whatever it was David was buying. David had him running all over the place on one errand or another.

Suddenly, seemingly from out of nowhere, the lot was alive with uniformed and undercover cops—all pointing guns at Tom Brown, Richard Steinhart, and Bob "Animal" Moran. Bewildered, Tom staggered out of his car and was bent over the hood and handcuffed.

"You're all under arrest for murder," a Huntington Beach officer barked.

"For
what?"
Tom asked.

"For first-degree murder."

Animal Moran and Richard Steinhart, the two "hired killers" were also cuffed and hauled away. For all Tom Brown knew, David had ordered him into a nest of vipers, and he had been caught with the worst of them. He didn't know what in hell this was all about. He was both frightened and furious.

David Brown had now paid $23,400 for three murders that never happened. The "Bo Brothers" were out of business. But David didn't know that yet.

Tom Brown was transported to an interview room at the Huntington Beach Police Department. He sat alone, handcuffed, with a look of total bewilderment on his face for more than half an hour until Jay Newell and Fred McLean arrived to talk with him.

Tom Brown asked repeatedly, "What's going on?"

But Newell could not explain until he had read Tom Brown his Miranda rights.

Then he said slowly, "You're under arrest for murder—"

"For who?"

"Some people got killed," Newell said slowly, "and one of them—it looks like—was the wrong person."

Newell could be forgiven this fib. He suspected the news of a foulup would get back to David, who had been having a wonderful time for weeks orchestrating Jay Newell's sudden death.

Tom Brown now looked both incredulous and panicked. All he knew about the two men at Bennigan's was that they were supposed to be protecting David. "David called me last week and told me to take eleven thousand dollars to them today."

Tom explained that he and his father always went to the office of Joel Baruch, David's attorney, to get checks from David's trust account. "He wouldn't tell me nothing. He just said that his life and Krystal's were in danger and he needed protection."

Tom recalled bringing the two beefy "bodyguards" $10,000 a week before. He remembered too, with some prompting from Newell, that he had delivered $ 1,700 before that—"to show good faith." David had given the orders. Tom had asked no questions. He knew nothing about murders. Nothing. He would have had no part in it. He shouted at Newell and McLean in his rage and fear.

"What would you say if I told you two people got killed—and one of them is the wrong person?" Newell asked.

"Nothing. I don't know anything about it."

Tom Brown was held for four hours and released. Clearly, he had been his brother's dupe and had no idea that he was delivering money intended—at least by David—to pay for three murders. Newell asked him not to tell anyone about what had happened, knowing that Tom
would
tell, and that it would get back to David.

Newell now had twenty-six audio and/or video tapes that tied David Brown irrevocably to solicitation to commit murder. In David's own words. In David's own voice.

When Tom Brown was dismissed after questioning, still confused and angry at the mess David had dumped him into, he apparently went right to his parents, who called Joel Baruch's office. They didn't know much. They knew only that someone had been killed, and that
it was the wrong person. .
. .

Later that afternoon, Tom Borris received a breathless call from Joel Baruch's partner, Jack Early.
"Is
Jeoff Robinson dead?"

"I can't discuss it," Borris answered tensely. "You've called right in the middle of our investigation."

Actually, Robinson was alive and well and working in the office next to Borris. But until all the pieces came together, Borris preferred not to announce that.

At nine-thirty on the night of February 13, David Brown had an official visit from his attorney, Joel Baruch. Deputy Dan Vazquez could not hear what the two were saying, but he saw Baruch wave his arms emphatically, and he could tell that the discussion was an extremely emotional one. David lit one cigarette after another, heedless that he was in a no-smoking area.

Vazquez caught fragments of sentences: ". . . just got the most terrible news . . ."

When David's attorney left, David headed down toward Irv Cully's cell. He was shouting, "Cully! Cully! Goldie fucked up! Goldie fucked up."

David had been nervous as a cat all day, and now he had just learned that the plan hadn't gone down smoothly after all. That damn Richard must have gone and shot the wrong guy!

39

D
avid learned far worse news on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1989. Goldie
hadn't
shot the wrong man. He hadn't shot anybody. His beloved Goldie had set him up—had even cooperated with his bitterest enemies. Jeoff Robinson and Jay Newell—
and
Patti Bailey—were all quite alive. David, who considered himself the maestro of exploitation, had fallen completely for Richard Steinhart's gift of gab.

Without Steinhart's help, it was likely that all of David's designated victims
would
have been dead. But Steinhart had stalled David long enough for Newell and Borris to get solid evidence that a murder plot did, indeed, exist.

When David frantically tried to call his attorney, he found no comfort in that direction. Joel Baruch had left for Florida that morning to celebrate his wedding anniversary.

On February 15, David was charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit murder, three counts of solicitation to commit murder, solicitation to commit perjury, subornation of perjury, and conspiracy to commit arson. Jack Early, one of David's attorneys, described him as "surprised, shocked, and distraught."

An understatement perhaps.

No more shocked than Patti Bailey. When she learned that her husband had thoroughly intended that she would be dead by sundown on Valentine's Day, she told reporters that she figured, "Oh, come on."

But the next day, Jay Newell filled her in on all the details. She began to cry and to shake uncontrollably. "I'm hurt," she finally whispered. "But it's to be expected.
Anything
is to be expected. I believe it. I guess he likes to repeat history."

There was a new brittleness about Patti. She had seen all of her dreams evaporate. She had read her fifty letters from David and found he could no longer make her believe. They were full of lies, designed only to persuade her to protect him. She had no one. Rather than expecting
anything,
Patti expected nothing. Her family had cut her off. "But I understand—killing my own sister. I still have to live with that."

Paradoxically, Patti bravely told reporters she was experiencing a kind of freedom. She had been bound to David for so many years. Jail let her be more her own person. Patti, who had been forced to drop out of high school, passed her GED test while she was in the Orange County Jail. "I feel a lot freer. I'm in jail, but I can do what I want."

Not really. Patti tried to hang herself in jail.

Irv Cully was moved to a different jail location and so was David Brown. The man without a home was Richard Steinhart. He needed a secure location. Not only was he waiting to testify in one trial, he would now be a witness in David Brown's trial. He was a target. His enemies branded him a "jailhouse snitch," which was not precisely accurate.
He
had been snitched off and then had agreed to cooperate with the District Attorney's Office because he deplored David Brown's morals and methods.

Steinhart had gained nothing and lost a good deal. He had no place to go, and he was not safe on the street. David was enraged, and the Hessians were still looking for him.

"I found him a place," Newell recalled with a wry smile. "The one thing you might say about it is that it was secure. Apartments and motels were expensive and vulnerable. So I rented him a bank vault. It wasn't fancy, but it had a window and it only cost six hundred dollars a month— including breakfast."

The vault was in a defunct bank. Steinhart decorated it to suit himself and for the moment, called it home.

With spring burgeoning in the desert, Steinhart headed out one day, seeking a certain monument that said either "29 Palms" or "Joshua Tree." He took a buddy with him, a borrowed pickup truck, and digging tools. David had told him repeatedly that there was a fortune buried up there, much of it in small bills, a fortune hidden from the IRS. It might be as little as $300,000 or it might be $5 million.

They found the left turn and they found the wash, and they followed their compasses due north as David had instructed. And they found a boulder next to a yucca tree.

"We dug, and we dug." Steinhart grimaced, remembering. "It was hot. We got a spot hollowed underneath, and my buddy was holding the boulder up, kind of, with wrecking bars. I was digging under it."

The wrecking bars gave way in the sand and the boulder came crashing down, catching one of Steinhart's middle fingers beneath it. "It squashed that finger like an empty banana peel," he said, holding it up to show scars. "And then it plain took it off. My buddy was all gung ho to keep digging, and I was trying to hold my finger on by a shred of flesh. I told him I didn't think we should pursue the project—at least not then."

Emergency room surgeons were able to reattach Steinhart's flattened finger, but his enthusiasm for treasure hunting was vastly diminished.

Richard Steinhart had never really beaten his addiction to cocaine. On May 14, 1989, Officer R. Reinhart of the Huntington Beach Police Department was staked out on Commodore Circle, a notorious area for drug dealing. He had made at least fifty drug arrests there. He spotted a slow-moving pickup truck driven by a young woman. As the officer observed the two occupants wheel around on Commodore Circle, he saw a young Hispanic man walk up to the truck and show the male passenger two plastic bags with white powder in them. The bearded passenger gave the man some money and accepted the Baggies. The officer didn't know Richard Steinhart, but he recognized a drug deal when he saw one going down.

Steinhart was busted again.

He went back to the Orange County Jail, but this time his life changed completely. "I was in total sep [separation]." He had his reputation as a physically powerful man, but that was all he had. He saw that "Charles Manson and mass murderers are heroes in prison." But he didn't want that.

Steinhart found what he wanted at chapel call on the evening of June 22, 1989. There are scores of men behind bars who "find God" because it is expedient. No one who talked to Richard Steinhart believed that he was among them; he became a man totally committed to his religion. "I'd been going three times a week to chapel call when some of it began to sink in," he said. In chapel that night, he experienced a jolting spiritual awakening. It never left him.

Indeed, he wasn't even
in
chapel for religious reasons. "I was only going to find out what was happening in the mods—'cause I was in total sep, or maybe to bully the kids out of their candy bars, their commissary packs, their peanuts and stuff, bully them to put money on my books and stuff. But the Holy Spirit came upon me. The Reverend Win Barr asked if anyone wanted to accept Jesus Christ. My hand just shot up, and I didn't realize it was
up.
Everybody's going, 'Steinhart's tryin' something—look!' They figured I had an escape plan, 'cause they
knew
me, and they asked me afterward how I was going to do it, 'cause they wanted to ride on my coattails. . . .

"I went back to my cell—three concrete walls with a glass front, and a twenty-four-hour guard—and I tried to find the smallest corner of my cell so the bull in the bubble couldn't see me, and I got on my hands and knees and I started crying and I begged God for mercy . . . and forgiveness. I got off my knees a new creature."

At breakfast the next day, Steinhart suggested that his fellow prisoners say grace. Bewildered, they did. And then he led them around the table, singing "Amazing Grace." Most of them thought he was crazy, and some believed this was all part of a master escape plan.

There was no escape plan. Steinhart was, for ever after, a changed man.

He still worried, however, about his power to control his addiction when he was on the street again. He called Jay Newell for help. Newell found Set Free, a drug rehabilitation program that would waive its long waiting list—
only
if the patient came directly from jail. The day Steinhart was released, Newell picked him up and took him to the program. After that, he went to a church-sponsored rehabilitation program at Lake Elsinore, California.

Steinhart no longer cared about David Brown's elusive treasure. It was quite possible that the half million dollars, even 5 million—if it did indeed exist—still waited under some boulder, near some yucca tree on the way to Barstow, California.

Patti Bailey believed that David had a hidden cache of money in the desert. Although she never went with him, she saw him leave the house with bags of money many times. He told her he was going to bury it so that the tax men wouldn't find it.

There was no trial for David Brown in March 1989. The new charges virtually demanded a postponement. His case was becoming more and more complicated. It seemed likely that it would be autumn before a trial could get under way.

During the second week of May, Patti Bailey was allowed to plead guilty to her sister's murder in an Orange County juvenile courtroom. On June 2, she sobbed as Superior Court judge C. Robert Jameson sentenced her to the California Youth Authority until her twenty-fifth birthday.

Patti was now one of the key witnesses against David. She had barely turned twenty-one. If she had been tried as an adult, she would have faced twenty-seven years to life in prison. As a juvenile, she would probably be released when she was twenty-five. Patti didn't really understand that. Even as she pleaded guilty, and when she was sentenced, she believed that she would go to the California Youth Authority prison for four years,
then
be transferred to an adult facility where she would stay for the rest of her life.

"I pleaded guilty," she said, "because I know that what I did was wrong—real wrong. . . . I'm just sorry it ever happened. I just wish I could make it all go away. You never realize how much you miss someone until she's gone, and I'd give anything in the world to have her back now. I have to live with this the rest of my life. I don't think I'm getting off easy."

"There were no deals for Patti Bailey," Jeoff Robinson told the press. He explained that the case was heard in Juvenile Court because Patti was only seventeen at the time of the murder, because she did not pull the trigger, and probably most significantly, because she had been sexually abused and brainwashed during all the years she had lived with David Brown.

Joel Baruch sniped at Robinson. "That's the way the DA operates. They just bought themselves a witness." Baruch contended that he would prove at David's murder trial that he never wanted Linda dead, and that he was presently the unwitting target of lies told by his sixth wife, Patti, and his daughter, Cinnamon.

Ironically, Patti would now be locked up in Ventura, the prison school where Cinnamon had already spent four years. They would be housed in separate "cottages" far apart—but they would come in contact occasionally.

Arthur and Manuela, David's parents, would raise Krystal. Patti's little girl, Heather Nicole Bailey, was in the care of Mary Bailey, Rick's wife. Even if Patti should be released from prison in four years, she would miss her baby's vital, growing-up years.

When Patti was transferred to the Ventura School in Camarillo, David continued to write to her. His trial lay ahead. He needed Patti's support. He asked her if she was "woman enough" to drop her story and warned her to "watch her back" because she was "trusting the wrong people."

That wasn't true. Patti didn't trust anyone. Her heart beat too fast, she perspired, her chin shook, and sometimes she felt as if she could get no air at all.

No, Patti Ann Bailey Brown did not get "a deal."

Cinnamon and Patti were in prison, and David Brown was in jail, awaiting what should have been a speedy trial. But justice rumbled along as sluggishly as an overloaded mule. There was no closure. No one connected with the case could make plans.

On June 19, 1989, Joel Baruch filed a second recusal motion on behalf of his client. He sought to have the Orange County District Attorney's Office removed from the case. Since David Brown now stood accused of conspiring and soliciting the murder of two Orange County staff members —Jeoff Robinson and Jay Newell—Baruch suggested there would be a "conflict of interest."

Should Baruch be successful in removing the DA's office —or only Robinson and Newell—he would accomplish what David had clumsily tried to achieve with his murder plots. A new prosecuting team would be brought in. It was unlikely that
any
team from the California State Attorney General's Office could learn as much about David Brown as Newell and Robinson knew. His life was so intricate, his plans so devious. What had been written down was voluminous; the sheer experience that Newell and Robinson shared was vital to the prosecution's case.

Deputy District Attorney Tom Borris countered the recusal motion. "We are looking at Baruch very closely." After the DA's office realized that the money for the planned "hits" had been released in two checks from Baruch's office to Tom Brown, Baruch's possible involvement in the assassination plot became a question too. However, Borris said his office could find no evidence that the defense lawyer had
known
that the money was allegedly to be used as a murder payoff. One $ 10,000 check had a notation that it was to buy "rare coins."