If You Really Loved Me Part 45

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 s.e.xual 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 tofd 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 stopa"but then he made her feel guilty for asking. She had had s.e.x with one of her brothers before moving in with David and Linda.

"Did you feel guilty about that?"

"Noa"my brother was forcing me."

"Did you resent it?"

"Yes. Sometimes."

David had been the firsta"before her brother. Even with David she sometimes felt forced to have s.e.x. She had never told anyone about Davida"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 love 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 girlsa"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 s.e.x with her brother-in-law every time Linda wasn't around. David never forced hera"

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 Pattia"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 s.e.xual 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.'" 495 "Did you ever think that it was wrong to paralyze a newborn baby's qiother?" - "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 Lindaa" when she wasn't around ... stabbing, suffocating. The day before we talked about pushing her off a cliffa"me or Cinnamon."

"How ... T "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 helpa"but I was going to plead guilty either way."

"Were you angrya"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."

Each lie that Patti tolda"every onea"was brought out and a.n.a.lyzed in this grueling cross-examination. Patti replied that she had not lied; she was "confused. I didn't want to remember that I'd been so involved in my sister's murder."

Patti Bailey Brown, swiveling in her chair, quivering like a leaf in the wind, her hands nervously touching her face, was questioned on redirect, recross. She had exposed all that she was, everything she thought.

It left her with nothing.

44.

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