SOUTHLAND : Judge Likens Killer to Manson
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SANTA ANA — Likening David Brown to Charles Manson, a judge this morning ordered the man convicted of orchestrating his wife’s 1985 murder to spend the rest of his life behind bars with no chance of release.
“Mr. Brown, you’re a scary person,” Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin told the man who was convicted in June of setting up his 14-year-old daughter to murder his wife before secretly marrying his wife’s 17-year-old sister. Brown sought to profit from the $835,000 in insurance on his wife.
McCartin said that Brown, unlike some killers, did it all under the guise of a normal personality. “It makes Charles Manson look like a piker,” the judge said.
In delivering the strongest sentence open to him, McCartin also said that if the Orange County district attorney’s office had pursued the death penalty against the 37-year-old computer whiz, he might well have been sent to the gas chamber.
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