If You Really Loved Me (62 page)

Liberty has no illusions about David Brown. "He'll always be dangerous—he'll always be able to get somebody to do what he wants if he has money—or if he can convince some con he has money"

Jeoff Robinson has several more felony trials behind him now, but he will remember the David Brown case as the most memorable of many memorable murder cases. Someday—but not quite yet—Robinson may accept his father and brother's invitation to join their law firm. He loves his family devotedly, but he eats, sleeps, and breathes the prosecution of felons.

With Jay Newell, Robinson joined the Brown jury for a reunion after David Brown's sentencing. They chose Bennigan's—the restaurant whose parking lot was the site of the payoffs made by Tom Brown, the payoffs that David Brown believed would result in Robinson's and Newell's executions.

Jay Newell still heads the Narcotics Enforcement Team for the Orange County District Attorney's Office. He and his wife contribute to the Orange County chapter of Child Help U.S.A., an organization open to all kids in trouble—no questions asked.

Fred McLean is training for a hundred-mile marathon. He and his wife, Bernie, have a grandson now, but that hasn't slowed Fred—or Bernie—down. After the trial, it was Fred McLean who noticed Patti Bailey's scratched glasses, took her prescription, and bought her a pair that she could see out of.

Cinnamon Brown is still in prison as this is written. She has moved to "M.C.," and adult cottage, and shares her room with another girl. She sleeps in the top bunk. "I appreciated having my own room over the years—but I can manage having a roommate.''

"Wards" are offered a chance to learn dog grooming and that tempted Cinnamon, but she chose to continue to work for TWA on the reservations lines instead. She is one of their five top-rated employees at Ventura.

She has earned twenty-four hours in college credits and maintains a 3.33 GPA (B+). She is currently studying cultural anthropology, American democracy, and art appreciation. She is very busy working, going to college, and with therapy groups.

Still, Cinnamon is always aware that she is locked up. Although she has "free movement" to the TWA offices (inside the CYA campus), it is easy to receive a behavior report. There are so many rules to remember.

Cinnamon has both dreams and fears for her future. She has many regrets about the past. She thinks she is, in many ways,
more
mature at twenty than she would be had she never been locked up. She gained a great deal of self-respect when she told the truth in 1988, and she shows concern for the younger wards at Ventura School.

"My friend came to me in confidence once and explained that our counselor was molesting her. I told her to tell someone in authority, and she said we would have no way to prove what was going on. So I gave her my tape recorder and told her to record it. So she taped it to her body and got it recorded. I got this idea from Jay recording my father and me. I knew the counselor would have no idea it was there and continue on. It worked. I'm proud that I was able to help her out of that awful situation.

"Jay Newell helped me the most while I've been in Ventura. He gave me strength, and he believes in me, Jeoff has helped too and so has Fred. I appreciate them for all they've done."

Cinnamon realizes and accepts that she will probably never see her father again. Even today, however, she is ambivalent. The little girl who trusted her daddy cannot quite let him go.

"My dad was a challenge," she remembers. "Especially as I grew, things became more complicated. I had to struggle to show him I loved him, I was very dependent on him. I needed his approval on
everything.
He was tops then—I had full trust in him. . . .

"I feel sorry for my father. He's done very bad things to people, and I feel sorry for him because it doesn't matter to him. I love him still. But I will not forgive him for the awful mistakes I've made because of him. It bothers me knowing he's most likely not going to change himself. He'll feel at home in prison. He can have people tend to his needs. He'll never be alone and he'll have people to manipulate. Prison will be comfortable for him. He'll get the attention he needs. I regret having to turn him in, because now my little sister will not know her dad or ever know her mom. I feel totally responsible. I pray my father changes. I love our memories and fun. I'll not agree with the things my father does, but I'll always have that love there. I'll never see him again and I can live with that."

After his conviction, Cinnamon sent her father the Lord's Prayer and the Catholic confession prayer. Her note read:

DADDY,

I sure hope you will read these and remember who they're from. I took time to do this for you 'cause I love you. And I think they will bring some hope into your life.

LOVE ALWAYS,
CINNY 1990

Cinnamon, finally able to participate in counseling now that she has no secrets, knows that she has to let her father go, to forgive him for what he did to her. If she harbors resentment, she knows it will only destroy her. Cinnamon refers to her mother, Brenda, as "my backbone—she believes in me and she shares herself with me . . . we communicate fine now and I love her with all my being."

Cinnamon and Patti are not close even though they are locked in the same prison. "She wants me to act like nothing ever happened and start over," Cinnamon says. "I can't. I can't just not remember the hurt and pain. Here in Ventura, she goes out of her way to be where I am. I need space from her. She acts like she needs my approval, but talks bad about me to someone else. I don't understand why she plays games with my emotions— talking about her baby, Heather, and her and my dad's marriage or about letters she gets from my dad. She hurts me but smiles in my face, saying she loves me. I'm fine by myself ... I'm moving on with my life."

Cinnamon has learned not to expect too much. Even so, she cannot repress that bubble of hope that maybe her next parole hearing will set her free after six years in jail and prison. Although she might be expected to be bitter, she is not. She struggles still with the regret her father cannot feel, but she wants so much to return to the world outside one day.

"I miss my family. I miss seeing my two younger sisters grow. I also miss the beach and being around people who are happy. I miss riding my bike. I miss having people there for me. I miss food. I really miss having a dog. Maybe another Chihuahua—they're faithful dogs. I miss being creative; we're limited to what we can do here— such as making crafts.

"When I go home, I want to go to Disneyland—the happiest place on earth—Sea World, the zoo in San Diego. I love animals. I really want to learn how to drive and buy a car. I've always felt insecure about driving. I thought I'd never have a chance.

"I want to find a job and start living within the community, learn about environmental problems around me so I can be aware and help the community. I would eventually like finding the things my father has that are mine. All those memories in pictures and personal items. I truly want my personal property.

'After quite some time and I feel comfortable, I would like to get in contact with Krystal, my little sister. . . . My dad's side of the family disowned me after my father was arrested. So I no longer exist to them, which really hurts."

Even as Cinnamon strives to be free, she is frightened of the world outside Ventura School. At twenty, she has never been allowed any contact with boys beyond holding hands. The world has moved on without her for six years.

"I'm comfortable here," she explains. "Sometimes I get so caught up here, I forget there's out there. I worry about my safety from my dad. I worry about not learning how to drive. I worry I won't have a chance to catch up on the things I haven't got to do yet. Like I'll only have a while to catch up—before something awful happens. I wonder if I'll live longer in here than out there, because of my father. So many changes since I've been here; I'm nervous that'll be lost out there.

"I'll be different than the others. I grew up in jail. How will people see me? Will they treat me like a criminal? Will they trust me?

"I haven't let Ventura change me in any negative ways. I observed everything. I'm still very young at heart. I love to laugh and make people laugh. I'm mature, but I kept my innocence—meaning Ventura didn't harden me because I wouldn't let it So will people stereotype me and judge me? Or will I be given another chance totally? Will I seem like a threat to people because I shamefully killed Linda?"

David Brown continues to saddle his oldest daughter with fear and pain, even though he never writes to her. How lamentable that Cinnamon must walk with the specter of "something awful" cutting off her life.

Her dreams are modest. "I want a comfortable, normal job, and I want to someday marry and have children, I want a family and maybe a job as a travel agent or in social services or in education. I want to earn my A A [associate degree] and attend some courses on travel.

"I want a simple life; I want to focus on myself and bringing happiness to myself. [In Ventura,] I learned how to be assertive. I learned to appreciate others' values. I learned patience. I basically learned people skills. I learned how to adjust with many different personalities.

"I learned not to give up hope."

Last of all, Cinnamon Brown at twenty vows never to forget Linda. It might be better for her if she could let go just a little, but she cannot.

"It's important to me that people know I feel very ashamed of what I did to Linda. It's very painful knowing I took her life and she'll never have a chance again. I took the law into my own hands, and I think constantly of what I've done to Linda. I cry and pray for her often, because I loved her.

"That's what hurts more than anything.
I
loved her, and still believed my father's lies
. . .
and I killed her!
None of it was true. Linda wasn't the person my father made her out to be. I think it's okay for me to love her and miss her. If there was one wish given to me, and it could be anything, I'd wish Linda her life back. Not because of the consequences but because I hate living with the pain of Linda being dead because of me. She trusted me and loved me, and I was selfish and took her life. I'll never forget those emotions at all. I'll never forget Linda. She'll always be there to remind me of what I've done.

"I never want the pain to go away. I deserve to live with the painful truth. . . .

"I've learned to appreciate all that we're given—good or bad. I picked the positive things and kept them and formed an understanding of the bad. I couldn't change them, so I learned to accept them and not forget them.

"It took a while for me to trust again. But it was well worth it. Not everyone is a bad seed.

"Unfortunately, my father was. . . ."

On January 15, 1991, Cinnamon Brown faced the California Youthful Offender Parole Board for the sixth time. She had already been incarcerated longer than the fìve-and-a-half-year average sentence served by convicted juvenile murderers in California. Even high-profile teenage killers whose crimes had been totally reprehensible had been released. But not Cinnamon. Her mother and grandmother and Jeoff Robinson and Jay Newell had reason to be optimistic that she was, at last, close to freedom. Indeed, they were more hopeful than Cinnamon herself, who had long since grown used to disappointment.

Robinson and Newell asked for a chance to speak to the parole board before Cinnamon was ushered in. They explained that Cinnamon had declined to talk to the board alone since late 1988 at their express request, that it had been vital that she remain silent until her father was convicted. Robinson asserted that she had been given this directive after her father's defense attorneys got hold of a private psychological report that they used to attack her character.

Cinnamon Brown had been truly between a rock and a hard place; she had to place her faith in someone, and she had trusted Jay Newell and Jeoff Robinson. She had ached to tell the whole story to the parole board but she'd kept quiet, even though she had known it would prolong her time in prison into late 1990 or early 1991, at the very least. Knowing the risk she was taking, Cinnamon had kept all the promises she's made.

The Orange County district attorneys had, in return, made her no promises. They could not. But Jeoff Robinson had told the David Brown jury that he believed Cinnamon should now be free. Many of the jurors felt the same way, and they had written letters to the parole board on her behalf.

For two agonizing hours, Cinnamon answered the board's questions, and listened to their characterizations of her. Victor Weishart, chairman of the parole board, was clearly not impressed with Cinnamon's prior refusal to open up to the board. He had encountered Cinnamon at parole hearings before and apparently did not find that she had grown in any way.

The three-member board issued a statement after the closed hearing. They had ruled that Cinnamon's "testimony against her father should not be considered in determining Cinnamon's parole readiness." By a two-to-one vote, the panel chose not to change the date she would be eligible for parole. Her current parole date was now set for March 1992. The dissenting board member, Fred Bautista, favored a CYA staff recommendation that
one month
be cut from her sentence, "time off for good behavior," which would allow her to be released in
February
1992.

"[Cinnamon Brown] still needs to make much more progress in addressing the reasons why she became involved in this calculated crime," the board concluded. "[She] is manipulative and [her psychologist] describes her as customarily flippant in therapy." Comparing her to David Brown, the board stressed that being "manipulative" was "a trait employed to perfection by her father."

Cinnamon, who had endured prison for a half-dozen years while her father and Patti Bailey lived in luxury, and then while they fought conviction, was given little hope that she would get out before she was twenty-five years old. Although she had been brought into the killing plot
years
after her father and Patti began discussing it, Cinnamon had apparently come to be seen as the prime instigator in the board's mind. She had kept silent first to protect her father, and later to protect the State's case.