S\o7 uperior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin's eighth-floor courtroom in downtown Santa Ana has a peculiar notoriety: Two of the nation's most sensational trials played out there with shocking, oftentimes gruesome, revelations.
In 1989, McCartin sentenced Long Beach serial killer Randy Kraft to death for the mutilation murders of 16 young men.
And, in 1990, McCartin ordered computer entrepreneur David Brown to spend the rest of his life in prison for masterminding the murder of his fifth wife, 23-year-old Linda Bailey Brown, so Brown could collect nearly $1 million in insurance money and marry his teen-age sister-in-law, Patti Bailey. It's a crime for which Brown's teen-age daughter, Cinnamon, was convicted five years earlier.
Given the sensational ingredients of each case--drugs and sexual obsession, murder and manipulation--it's not surprising that, seated among the reporters covering the trials, were book authors quietly taking notes.
\f7 This week, the results of their research began hitting bookstores.
\o7 "Angel of Darkness" (Warner Books; $19.95), by Los Angeles Times reporter Dennis McDougal, chronicles the life and crimes of Randy Kraft, whose trail of victims, prosecutors believe, may actually number as many as 67. The victims--many of them Marines, most of them hitchhikers--were believed to be drugged by Kraft, who then tortured and strangled them. Their bodies, many of which were sexually mutilated, usually were dumped along freeway ramps or in remote areas.
"If You Really Loved Me: A True Story of Desire and Murder" (Simon & Schuster; $22.95), by best-selling true-crime writer Ann Rule, tells the gripping tale of David Brown, "the ultimate sociopath," who would "use 'love,' sexual enslavement, lies, money and mind manipulation to turn those who trusted him into puppets who would do his bidding."
\f7 Ann Rule first heard of David Brown on Sept. 23, 1988, when she read a short story in her Seattle newspaper about the arrest of Brown and Patti Bailey in their new Anaheim home.
What caught Rule's attention was the headline: "Teen-Ager Goes To Prison to Protect Father in Murder Case."
Only hours after Linda Bailey Brown's murder in 1985, Cinnamon Brown had been found in a doghouse behind their previous home in Garden Grove. Near-comatose from a drug overdose and clutching an apparent confession note ("Dear God, please forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt her."), the 14-year-old later admitted shooting her sleeping step-mother.
