ALL IN THE FAMILY

David Arnold Brown: Masterminded a twisted plot to have his 14-year-old daughter, Cinnamon, kill his wife Linda Marie, collect $835,000 in life insurance on his wife and then marry the dead woman’s 17-year-old sister, Patti. When the plot was unraveled and Brown arrested, he hired a fellow inmate to kill the three people he felt responsible for his predicament.

Linda Marie Brown: As David Brown’s fourth wife, the 23-year-old was the target of the 1985murder/insurance fraud scheme plotted by him, her sister, and stepdaughter Cinnamon Brown.

Cinnamon Brown: Since her father “didn’t have the stomach for it”, Cinnamon carried out the murder of Linda Marie. Hours after fatally shooting her stepmother twice in the abdomen, Cinnamon, then 14, was found near-comatose, lying in her own vomit in the back-yard dog house, clutching a suicide note that read, “Dear God, please forgive me. I didn’t mean to hurt her.” She confessed to the murder and was sentenced to 27-years-to life, but remained silently loyal to her father for three years until she was persuaded in 1988 to reveal the whole story.

Patti Bailey: The younger sister of Linda Marie, she lived with the couple and Brown molested her from the time she was 11. Originally designated to kill her sister, she backed out at the last minute. A little more than a year after the murder she secretly married her dead sister’s husband. The pair have a 2-year-old daughter who is living with a Bailey family member.

Researched by Dallas M. Jackson and Janice L. Jones / Los Angeles Times