Life Sentence Given Man Who Had Daughter, 14, Kill His Wife

Likening him to Charles Manson as a “master manipulator,” a judge on Monday ordered computer whiz David Brown to spend the rest of his life in prison without parole for orchestrating his wife’s 1985 murder.

“Mr. Brown, you’re a scary person,” Orange County Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin told the 37-year-old defendant, who was convicted of murder in June for setting up his devoted 14-year-old daughter to murder his fifth wife while she slept.

While his daughter sat silently in prison for nearly four years, the Anaheim Hills man collected $835,000 from the victim’s insurance policy and lived in opulence with his new wife--the victim’s teen-age sister--whom he recruited to aid in the murder and then secretly wed.

In imposing the heaviest sentence open to him, McCartin said that if the district attorney’s office had pursued the death penalty against Brown, the judge might well have sent him to the gas chamber for his “unbelievable” crimes.

Brown’s best hope for a more lenient sentence was to have McCartin strike down the jury’s finding that he killed his wife for financial gain, thus opening up the possibility of parole. But McCartin said there was ample evidence to suggest that the insurance money was “certainly a co-motive” in the crime and warranted life in prison.

“In my view,” McCartin said in an interview, “he got a break when the D.A. dropped the death penalty. It would have been a tough call (for the judge) to make when you’re dealing with someone who’s never been in trouble with the law before. But this case is the most bizarre I’ve ever heard.

“It’s hard to believe that someone could have that much control over other people,” the judge added.

He called Brown a “master manipulator” and told him during sentencing that his ability to betray those close to him and “not bat an eye” was amazing.

“It makes Charles Manson look like a piker,” said McCartin.