Cinnamon Brown made national news in the 1985 murder of her stepmother for which her father urged her to do. She was the subject of two books and a television miniseries. Free after serving serving seven years in a California Youth Authority facility.
At age 21, Brown was paroled after a 2-1 vote by the Youth Authority review board. She is now living in Orange County and working at a clerical job. She earned a high school diploma and an associate of arts degree at Ventura School in Camarillo.
Brown was convicted of shooting her stepmother, 23-year-old Linda Brown at the age of 14, taking full responsibility for the killing. Brown could have been committed to the Youth Authority until she reached 25.
After she was incarcerated, Brown learned her father, David Brown had collected $835,000 on Linda Brown's life insurance policy, living in luxury with his new wife, Patti Bailey, Brown's teen-age sister in Anaheim Hills.
In 1988, Brown finally told authorities that Linda Brown's shooting was masterminded by her father and that he was plotting it for months.
Brown told prosecutors that on the night of March 1985, her father woke her up and told her to shoot her stepmother. After David Brown gave Brown medication to make it look like a suicide, Brown survived because she vomited.
David Brown was finally convicted of his role in Linda Brown's murder in 1990; Patti Bailey was convicted for her part in the murder and committed to the Youth Authority.
Assistant Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. S. Robinson, who prosecuted David Brown, said Friday that “had Cinnamon Brown not decided . . . to come forward, we would still be wondering why David Brown is still out and flourishing. But for Cinnamon Brown’s courageous decision, David Brown would still be a leech on society.”
The case was the subject of two books, “A Killing in the Family” and “If You Really Loved Me,” and the miniseries “Love, Lies and Murder.”
In his dissent to Cinnamon Brown’s release, Youth Authority parole board member Victor Wisehart Jr. acknowledged that although she “has made great progress in her program, her reasons for the well-planned, coldblooded killing of her victim are not to be believed.”
Wisehart wrote that she “was able to conceal the truth and show no emotion or remorse for several years before she saw the light and pointed out her father as the person behind the crime. . . . (She) has not explored all the reasons she was able to twice shoot her victim.”
However, for Robinson, who supported an earlier parole bid by Cinnamon Brown, “the real story is the courage of this kid who was abandoned by her family; a 14-year-old-kid who was completely brainwashed for a number of years by her father; who herself has been the victim of terrible crimes and has now paid her debt to society, maybe even more of a debt than she should have. Yet her battle will be a very, very tough one, because her case is of such a high profile, a girl who has been earmarked as killer for the rest of her life,” he said.
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