If You Really Loved Me by Ann Rule Page A

recently prosecuted two particularly ugly murders involving teenagers.
    Kathy Sloane* was fourteen and her boyfriend, Sean Conley*, sixteen when they beat and stabbed Kathy's mother, Debbie Newton, thirty-six, to death on February 16, 1984. Ironically, the victim was a former chairwoman of the Orange County Coalition Against Domestic Violence and ran a shelter for female incest victims. She had allowed Sean Conley to live in the garage of her Fullerton residence— until she became alarmed over the sexual intensity of her fourteen-year-old daughter's romance and attempted to break the couple up.
    The teenage lovers killed her for interfering.
    Fredrickson had prosecuted Kathy and Sean for the murder as violent as any he had seen an adult commit. Physical evidence verified that each of them had used the weapon in the murder. Kathy was convicted of first-degree murder in an Orange County Superior Court in September of 1984 and sentenced to twenty-six years to life. Sean received the same sentence when he was convicted two months later.
    Fredrickson had also prosecuted Alan Coates*, sixteen, for the sadistic murder of his mother, a woman he despised. His writings, found in school papers in his desk, revealed the depth of his hatred.
    It was a growing problem for law enforcement all over America; when is a kid not a kid—at least in the eyes of the law? What is the cutoff point where a teenager should be prosecuted in adult court? Can such arbitrary decisions ever be made when one is dealing with human beings?
    Now, Fredrickson studied the Linda Brown case synopsis Sanders handed him, then silently passed it over to the man sitting across the desk from him. Assistant district attorneys and investigators are paired off in twos. And on the morning of March 19, 1985, Dick Fredrickson was lucky enough to draw Jay Newell as his investigator.
    Newell, thirty-nine, was a big, broad-shouldered man who looked like an athlete. In fact, he was a grudging—but habitual—runner. He was also a scuba diver because he reveled in the beauty and mystery far beneath the water's surface. He didn't play golf; he didn't bowl. Nevertheless, he ran in the Challenge Cup, a 120-mile relay from Baker, California, to Las Vegas each year to earn pledges for the policemen's widows and orphans fund. "I always run my ten K in the dark," he said. "When it's cooler."
    Athletics came to Jay Newell with no encouragement from him; he would far rather sit on a stakeout. He coached and managed a Youth Soccer League team for nine years, but only because of his kids. One daughter was a volleyball star, and he was extremely proud of that. He was proud of both his daughters, and of his wife, Betty Jo, a highly successful businesswoman. Newell was totally disinterested in watching sports on television. The outcome of the Super Bowl or the World Series meant little to him, but the outcome of a homicide case walked with him constantly.
    Newell was a detective with fourteen years of law enforcement behind him. This was what he did. This was what interested him. He was immensely talented at reading people, at judging their veracity by the way they shifted their bodies, averted their eyes, cleared their throats, breathed, smelled, gulped, smoked, drank.
    A craggily attractive man with dark hair, soft eyes, and a strong chin, Newell could look like a country preacher, a slick real estate salesman, a biker, or a tough cop. He was an interrogator with a deceptively easy manner who lay in wait for one misstep.
    He was a dogged pursuer. He never quit.
    He was a dangerous enemy for a felon to have.
    At eleven in the morning on that Tuesday in March, Jay Newell heard the name Cinnamon Brown for the first time. He read over the synopsis, noted the address on Ocean Breeze Drive, and headed out the door. "The first thing I do is to go to the scene. I'm not looking for anything in particular—I just want to get a feel, a sense of the place. It's a jumping-off point for me."
    And so