Bailey Ends Testimony, Says Husband Plotted Slaying

For months after their 1988 arrests, David Arnold Brown wrote to his new wife dozens of times in jail to profess his loyalty and to try to dissuade her from testifying against him about the murder of his former wife in their Garden Grove home, according to letters disclosed in court Tuesday.

“You should know that neither one of us has bad things to say about the other--only good,” Brown wrote in one of several dozen cards and letters he sent to Patti Bailey while both were in jail. “We can have our trial together if you want.”

It didn’t work. In November, 1988--less than two months after their joint arrest on murder charges and in the midst of what she described as almost daily letters from Brown--Bailey spoke for the first time with authorities about helping them in her husband’s prosecution.

In testimony that concluded Tuesday, Bailey admitted assisting in the 1985 murder of her own 24-year-old sister--who was then David Brown’s wife--and pinned the blame on Brown as the mastermind.

Brown, 38, who married Bailey in 1986, is in his second week of trial on murder charges in Superior Court in Santa Ana. He is accused of orchestrating the shooting death of Linda Brown, setting up his 14-year-old daughter to take the fall for the crime, then collecting $835,000 from the victim’s insurance policies.

The former computer entrepreneur from Anaheim Hills also faces charges that he paid a hit man $21,700 while in jail to kill Bailey and two members of the district attorney’s office to thwart his prosecution.

Under-cross examination Tuesday, Bailey, 22, denied that she is implicating her husband now because of a deal with prosecutors or a vendetta against Brown.

Bailey acknowledged that she first spoke with authorities in November, 1988, just days after learning that her jailed husband had told them that he was “scared” of her. She conceded that she was angry and upset with Brown because of the statement. And she also acknowledged that she now faces a shorter sentence than before she cooperated.

Originally charged as an adult, Bailey could have been sentenced to 27 years to life in prison if convicted of murder. But prosecutors agreed last year to let her plead guilty as a juvenile, meaning that she can expect to be released by age 25--less than three years from now--from the California Youth Authority in Camarillo.

But Brown’s defense attorney Gary Michael Pohlson, pointing to the “lies” that Bailey admits having already told about her sister’s murder, used the acknowledgements to try to show that she is now falsely accusing Brown to protect herself and get back at him.