LOCAL : Convicted O.C. Man Admits Plot to Kill Figures in Prosecution

Anaheim Hills computer entrepreneur David Arnold Brown, convicted last month in the 1985 murder of his wife, pleaded guilty this morning to additional charges of trying to kill three key figures in his prosecution.

Jailhouse conversations secretly recorded last year by authorities show that the 37-year-old Brown, while awaiting trial, paid a hit man more than $20,000 to kill the prosecutor in the case, the chief investigator, and his latest wife, Patricia Bailey.

Bailey married Brown secretly after helping him kill her own sister but became a star witness against him after her September, 1988, arrest.

Brown’s lawyers conceded that the jailhouse tapes left no dispute over Brown’s complicity in the assassination plot. As a result they agreed to a six-year term for the plot. That sentence is to run concurrently with whatever term Brown receives next month for the initial murder--at least 25 years in prison. But prosecutors noted that his guilty plea could help keep Brown in jail if he is ever up for parole.

Last month, a jury quickly found Brown guilty of having orchestrated his wife’s shooting death, setting up his teen-age daughter to take the fall for the crime and then collecting $835,000 from the victim’s insurance.