If You Really Loved Me

606 Pages·2016·2.09 MB·English

by  Ann Rule

Praise for Ann Rule's

IP YOU REALLY LOVED ME

"ANN RULE IS THE UNDISPUTED MASTER CRIME WRITER OF THE
EIGHTIES AND NINETIES—NO ONE DOES IT BETTER! IN IF YOU
REALLY LOVED ME, RULE WEAVES HORRIFYING TRUTHS INTO A
SPELLBINDING TALE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TERROR AND MURDER.
WITHOUT DOUBT, THIS IS HER BEST YET!"

—John Saul, author of Second Child

"RULE HAS TRIUMPHED . . . with this story of a millionaire computer expert
seen as the archetypal sociopath. ... In this vivid account, a monster to whom
every other human being was a 'throwaway person' is masterfully portrayed."

—Publishers Weekly

"A BIZARRE, COMPLEX STORY, and Rule does an admirable job of drawing
out the drama and the nuances. ..."

— Washington Post

"A REAL PAGE-TURNER ... A PASSPORT INTO PERVERSION."

—Seattle Times/Seattle Post Intelligencer

A LITERARY GUILD ALTERNATE SELECTION

Books by Ann Role,

If You Really Loved Me* The Stranger Beside Me Possession
Small Sacrifices

♦Published by POCKET BOOKS

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IP YOU

REALLY

LOVED ME

A TRUE STORY OF DESIRE AND MURDER

ANNEOLE

POCKET BOOKS New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the
Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 1991 by Ann Rule

All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon &
Schuster Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-76920-0

First Pocket Books printing April 1992

10 987654321

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Cover art by Paul Bacon

Stepback photos courtesy of Ann Rule

Printed in the U.S.A.

This book is dedicated to the memory of

J. D. newell and C. R. Stackhouse, the best of fathers—who gave their love with

no strings attached.

Contents

Prologue 1

PART ONE

THE CRIME 3

PART TWO

THE INVESTIGATION 143

PART THREE

THE ARREST AND THE DEATH LIST 325

PART FOUR

THE TRIAL 443

Afterword 571

Acknowledgments 589

If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.

If a child lives with hostility, he /earns to fight. If a child lives with ridicule,

he learns to be sharp. If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilty. If a
child lives with tolerance, he leams to be patient. If a child lives with
encouragement, he learns to be confident. If a child lives with praise, he
learns to appreciate.

If a child lives with fairness, he learns Justice. If a child lives with security, he
leams to have faith. If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself. If he

lives with acceptance and friendship, he leams to find love and warmth.

—Dorothy Law Nolte,

QUOTED BY JEOFF ROBINSON IN HIS FINAL ARGUMENTS

IF YOU REALLY LOVED ME

Prologue

The phoenix is a mythic bird of surpassing beauty, large as an eagle, that soars
triumphant, reborn, from the ashes of defeat and destruction. It can neither be
diminished nor destroyed. With its plumes of brilliant scarlet and glowing gold,
it represents new life in numerous cultures. Ancient tombs unearthed in Egypt
have images of the phoenix rising from a bed of flames. A phoenixlike creature
appears throughout Oriental mythology, and it is found in the coat of arms of
King James, Queen Elizabeth I, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

The rebirth of the phoenix symbolizes the resurrection of man. Down through

the ages, it has also come to represent divine power, royalty, and survival against
all odds. Over and over and over again, the magnificent bird bests its enemies
and takes flight, whole again, from the embers of ruin.

And yet the phoenix is only a dream, a myth, born of the imagination and of

wishful thinking. It lives somewhere with the unicorn, the centaur, Pegasus, and
all the mythic creatures of the mind. Even so, there are some for whom the
image of the phoenix is an invisible cloak of armor, an escape hatch, a sure
promise that no matter what sin a man may commit, he will always survive to
fly free of his tormentors.

It was so for David Arnold Brown. . . .

FART OWE

The Crime

'Long before Walt Disney saw his dream blossom into Disneyland, Orange
County, California, was a spot much sought after. Independent, perhaps even a
bit feisty, Orange County seceded from Los Angeles County a century ago. The
area known as the Santa Ana Valley became a whole new county, eventually the
third most populated in California. Orange groves thrived, vineyards
proliferated, and the new county beckoned to those who would come west to
begin a new life. But a prickly distrust lingered between Los Angeles and
Orange counties. Los Angeles County is bigger, glitzier, smoggier, and its
meaner streets are statistically more dangerous. The stargazers and the starlets,
the baby moguls and the legends, live there, clawing for fame and fortune, at
least according to those south of the "Orange Curtain." Conversely, Orange
County residents are deemed priggish, plastic, conservative—even "nerdy" by

some of the more urbane Los Angelenos. Richard Nixon was born in Yorba
Linda in northeast Orange County, and some of the L.A. contingent contend that
says it all.

In reality, Orange County is wealthy and high tech, predominantly Republican,

with a population so young and upwardly mobile that many who live there
cannot possibly envision what it must have been like when citrus groves and
vineyards spread out endlessly. The boom hit after 1950. Anaheim, now home to
Disneyland, huge convention centers, and the California Angels, had fewer than
fifteen thousand residents forty years ago; today, there are a quarter million. In
the last twenty years, Orange County's overall population has mushroomed to
2,280,400. There is precious little true "country" left. City lines simply merge.
The same streets run through Anaheim and Santa Ana, through Huntington
Beach and Irvine. Only the changing colors of street markers indicate city
borders.

Orange County is rife with diverse lifestyles existing side by side. The poor

live among and between the rich. In a matter of blocks, neighborhoods change.
Three-room houses give way to lovely homes with flourishing gardens and then
to walled estates. Santa Ana, the county seat, was once sedate and graciously
upper-middle class. Now, it is a melting pot.

Young Hispanic parents walk along Santa Ana's streets, carrying their proudest

possessions—beautiful babies and children, oddly bundled against the heat.
Cinco de Mayo is a major holiday, albeit a noisy one, in Orange County.

The old Orange County Courthouse, its red-rock exterior burnished by

sunlight, exists only as a museum, dwarfed and outdated by the near-skyscrapers
in the Civic Center Plaza. Lovely old homes along Broadway house attorneys'
offices, and one—a bank. The grounds of the Orange County Civic Center Plaza
draw the movers and the shakers, the attorneys and politicians, but the plaza is
also a dwelling place for the homeless, young druggies, middle-aged dropouts,
and the elderly poor, all attracted to Orange County by the moderate climate or
simply for their own ethereal reasons. Their shopping carts, overflowing with
possessions, are parked in militarylike lines in the shade of the courthouse—
Building 30.

Drive-by shootings occur almost daily in Santa Ana, and exquisite small parks

reverberate with curses and fights far into the night. Police wryly call
convenience stores "stop and robs". But other Santa Ana parks are safe and
serene, and state-of-the-art shopping malls rival any in America.

Life can be good in Orange County, the median household income is close to

$50,000 a year. The median-priced home sells for close to $250,000. Even the
most rudimentary house with two bedrooms and one bathroom will bring
$150,000.

Orange County smells of eucalyptus and dusty olive trees, of orange blossoms,

jasmine, wild plum, Mexican food, the Pacific Ocean (when the wind is right),
suntan lotion, the sweat of runners, and freeway exhaust. Geraniums and
impatiens bloom year-round, along with the fuzzy red pokers of bottlebrush
trees. The violet billows of the jaca-randa tree last for months. The median strips
of every freeway bloom with scarlet, pink, and white oleander bushes, ten feet
high. Yellow daylilies crowd the sidewalk near the Orange County Jail, and the
entrance to the Coroner's Office is like a garden with feathery ferns, salvia,
lobelia, and the majestic stalks of light-blue allium.

In 1985, 13,031 deaths were recorded by the Orange County Coroner's Office.

That office investigated 6,047 of those deaths and determined that 112 were
homicides.

One of those homicides occurred on Ocean Breeze Drive on March 19 in the

city of Garden Grove.

Ocean Breeze Drive is a one-block street, minutes from police headquarters, a

charmingly misnamed street where any wafting of sea wind would be highly
unlikely short of a major storm; the Pacific Ocean is a dozen miles away. Ocean
Breeze is a pretty street, sandwiched between Pleasant Place and Jane Street.
There are six houses on either side, all constructed in the sixties on large lots. All
have shake roofs and stucco-and-brick exteriors, and some are identical save for
color, trim, and landscaping. Each would sell today for a quarter million dollars.

The yard on the southwest end of the block has pink cabbage-rose bushes

behind a curving, white picket fence. Another front lawn features a circular
fountain edged with pansies, and colored lights play over it at night. Lawns are
always mowed, but trees and bushes have grown tall in the last twenty-five
years, and the houses on Ocean Breeze are shaded from the sun and reassuringly
private. The residents are mostly professional people, middle-aged. Family
people.

A weeknight in March in such a neighborhood was usually a quiet time for

police, especially as the hours crept toward morning. Garden Grove patrol
officer Darrow Halligan was nearing the end of his "evening's" watch at 3:26

A.M. on March 19, 1985. After a heavy daytime rain, the weather was cold and
clear, somewhere near forty to forty-five degrees, and Halligan kept his heater
going. Winding down from his eight-hour shift, he was driving near Brookhurst
and Lampson Avenue when he heard the radio call directing him to a "possible
187" (homicide) at 12551 Ocean Breeze Drive.

He knew the street well. The north end abutted Lampson; he was only a few

blocks away.

The street had no streetlights, and it was very dark as he inched along, shining

his spotlight on the houses to find "12551." Bushes grew so high around many
of the homes that Halligan couldn't even see the numbers. The house numbers
had been painted on the coved curbing, but not recently and the ciphers were
pretty well worn off. Finally, he made out the "12551" on a green stuceo and
brick bungalow on the west side of the street.

It was so quiet, so unlike the usual homicide call. No shouting or screaming,

and nobody out in the street to wave him in. Odd. Quiet enough to make the
muscles tighten in the back of Halligan's neck. Maybe it was only a prank call,
but "possible 187" was not a call any California cop wants to hear, especially at
three-thirty in the morning with no backup in sight. Halligan had arrived so
rapidly that he knew that the suspect, if any, might very well still be nearby.

His radio crackled with the information that the victim was inside the house

with a gunshot wound, but that the dispatcher had no further information, and no

description at all of a suspect.

"The suspect is not in the residence," the Garden Grove Communications

Center updated. "I have the informant on the phone with me now."

"Well, have the informant meet me at the front of the house, would you?"

Halligan responded, with some relief.

The porch light was out, but he could see lights on in the front window. A man,

short and heavyset, opened the door.

He stood, silhouetted, in the backlighting from the living room.

Halligan stepped in—alone—to a situation about which he had precious little

information. The man was clearly tense and distraught, his face streaked with
tears. Nearby, a young blond woman held a crying baby in her arms and sobbed
hysterically.

"I think my wife's been shot," the man said, stuttering with emotion. "She's in

the bedroom. I'm afraid to go look, Officer. Would you?"

He hadn't looked? Maybe that did mean a false alarm. Halligan asked where

the bedroom was and the stocky man pointed toward the southwest corner of the
house.

The young woman sobbed even louder, and the man seemed frightened. His

voice trembled when he asked Halligan to check on his wife. Halligan had no
time to ask him why he believed she'd been shot when he hadn't seen her. But
whatever his reasons, the guy was getting more and more agitated.

"Sit there on that couch, both of you," Halligan instructed. "I'll check the

bedroom."

He moved in the direction the man was pointing and found himself in a den or

office. He switched on his flashlight as he moved deeper into the house. The hall

beyond the den was very dark. He moved the beam of his flashlight along the
corridor until he spotted a half-closed door to the left of the den.

As he nudged the door open with his shoulder, he heard some sound, a gasp—

no, a gurgle. He knew better than to touch a light switch and contaminate any
fingerprint left there. He could make out a bed opposite the door. His flashlight
swept over a figure lying there, feet toward the door.

Halligan moved swiftly toward the person on the bed, the cone of light fixing

on a female with longish light hair. He could see a massive amount of still-wet
blood on her chest. She lay on her back with her right arm trailing off the side of
-the bed and her left hand raised to her ear.

She could not be dead. He rejected that because he could still hear the

choking gurgle in her throat as she struggled to draw in air. Halligan put his
fingertips to the carotid artery where it ran up the side of her neck. He felt
nothing. No reassuring pulse where there should have been a steady beat.

He leaned toward the young woman, who lay on flowered sheets, placing his

left ear next to her nose. He felt no breath. He looked to see if her breasts rose
and fell with any intake of air.

They did not.

Blood stained the woman's lips and chin, blood that had almost certainly

come up from her lungs. Halligan saw that the blue blanket covering her from
the waist down was smooth and flat; there could have been no struggle. It was
quite possible that she had not even wakened to see a gun pointed inches away
from her breasts.

Almost simultaneously other Garden Grove police ofli-cers and paramedics

began to arrive at the green bungalow. If there was a chance that the victim
still lived, they had to act. Conversation with the couple who huddled on the
couch in the living room would have to wait. Who they were or their
relationship to the victim would come later. The man had said that the injured
woman was his wife. He looked much older than she, but then he was under

tremendous stress. Grief and fear change people.

Officer Scott Davis, Patrol Sgt. Dale Farley, who would take over control of

the crime scene, and Halligan stood near the bed, helpless. Patrol Officers
Alan Day and trainee Andy Jauch joined them as they watched the victim for
some sign of life. The woman was so desperately injured , that no one short of
paramedics could treat her.

The police had to have a picture of the woman on the bed; it might be the

only tangible proof they had later of how she had been found. It might appear
uncaring, but it was not. Day had brought a Polaroid camera in with him, and
although the memory of that moment haunts Sergeant Farley today, he handed
it to Halligan and said, "The light's

not good, but get as many exposures as you can before she's moved."

She seemed young, and so vulnerable.

Halligan had time to take only two. Two Polaroid shots of a pretty young

woman with her eyes half open, her face bloodied but eerily serene. Her left
hand was still flung up next to her ear as it must have been while she slept. The
officers estimated her age as late teens to early twenties.

Paramedics Chris Esser and Ruben Ruvalcaba from the Garden Grove Fire

Department Engine 4-1 rushed into the southwest bedroom. They thought they
heard the woman gasp for air. It was hard to tell. A death rattle sounds almost the
same. They lifted the comatose victim from the bed and carried her to the closest
hard surface where they could administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation—the
den/office floor. She wore a knit shortie nightgown—black and white and red
with laughing penguins in top hats parading across the front until they
disappeared into the solid red of blood. They placed her on the tan carpet and
quickly cut away the silly little nightie, leaving her nude except for a pair of
fuzzy blue nightsocks.

As the paramedics worked, inserting an airway, and then an intravenous line

with a solution of D5W, they compressed the young woman's chest rhythmically,

urging her heart to start beating effectively.

The walls of this room were covered with family pictures. A huge studio

portrait of a man and a woman, smiling and obviously in love, hung over the
red-brick fireplace. They seemed to gaze down at the activity on the floor. It was
difficult to tell if the woman in the picture and the woman on the floor were the
same person. There was a definite similarity, but then the sobbing woman in the
living room also resembled the portrait. And a shooting victim, in extremis,
would look nothing at all like herself. Her skin was pallid, her eyes unfocused.
The paramedics' LifePak heart monitor showed erratic response to their CPR,
but no normal sinus rhythm. She would need surgery to have any chance of
survival, but they dared not move her until she was stabilized.

So many people were now coming and going that Farley placed Jauch at the

front door to maintain scene control. A log marked the arrival and departure
times of all personnel. Davis and Day were instructed to separate the man and
girl in the living room—and to begin preliminary interviewing.

Halligan finally had time to glance around the bedroom where the injured

woman had been found. A revolver with a two-inch barrel lay on the carpet
between the door to the hall and the bed, but no one knew yet if that was the
murder weapon. He left it there, waiting for the primary investigators to arrive.
Only now did he notice a small bathroom just off the bedroom, the door closed.
Cautiously, he pushed the door open, half-expecting to see someone hiding
there.

There was no one.

For any policeman, anywhere, there is a clearly defined list of priorities, and

the first item on that list is that life must be preserved. On down the roster are
things such as keeping the peace and arresting the guilty. Time hung frozen in
the den as the paramedics tried to help the victim live. Finally, she was carried
out to a Southland ambulance and rushed with sirens screaming toward the
Fountain Valley Community Hospital trauma unit. The ambulance was packed
with medical personnel; there was no room for Halligan, so Farley instructed
him to follow behind in his squad car and stay with the victim as she was treated

in the emergency room.

Dr. Michael Safavian was working the early-morning shift in the emergency

room. When the ambulance pulled up, he needed just a glance to see that only
heroic measures might bring the victim back.

It was five minutes after four in the morning when Safavian and the ER crew

began to work on the young woman. No air could reach her right lung; clotted
blood blocked the way. Safavian inserted a trocar into that lung to release blood,
hoping the organ would reinflate. At the same time, he ordered three units of
blood to be transfused into the patient.

No response.

Halligan watched as the emergency room surgeon tried one final, heroic

measure. Without anesthetic—she needed none—Safavian cut into the young
woman's left chest and reached in so that he could massage her heart, but it lay
leaden and still in his hands.

At twenty-six minutes past four, she was pronounced dead. Cause of death, or

rather manner of death, was apparent. There were two bullet wounds of entry in
her chest.

Joe Luckey, an Orange County deputy coroner, arrived at Fountain Valley

Community Hospital at five A.M. Luckey found a perfectly formed body still
warm to the touch; there was no rigor, no lividity.

Luckey began to list the hospital appliances: the IV points, a right chest tube, a

sutured left chest incision, an airway, and EKG monitor pads. He collected the
bloodied nightie and the pair of blue bootie socks, a wedding-engagement ring
set, and a gold bracelet, placing them in paper bags. He bagged the victim's
hands in case there was some trace evidence caught there.

And then the dead woman, tentatively identified as Linda Marie Brown,

twenty-three, was taken to the sally port entry behind the Orange County
coroner's office in Santa Ana. The guraey-scale in the floor just inside the door