It was a crime of sheer convenience yet somehow the tiny victim knew her murder was imminent.
Lauren Sarene Key was just four when her father, Cameron Brown, 53, hurled her off a 120-foot seaside cliff to avoid the $1,000-a-month child support payments her was ordered to pay her mother.
Earlier this year, nearly 15 years after Lauren’s murder, Brown, a former airline baggage handler, was convicted of first-degree murder and this week was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
At the trial the Californian jury heard chilling details of how the little girl feared going to her father’s care the night before her death, telling her stepbrother: “I think I’m going to die tomorrow.”
Lauren fell to her death from Inspiration Point in Rancho Palos Verdes, California and Brown has always alleged that she had ran ahead of him and tripped off the scenic bluff.
Brown’s lawyers argued that while he was a bad father, he was not a murder.
But an expert witness for the prosecution refuted Brown’s claims of how Lauren fell and said that a little girl of her age would not have been able to generate enough speed to launch herself off the cliff and land where she did. He pushed for Brown to be convicted of manslaughter.
According to AP, Brown’s first-degree murder conviction in May came 12 years after he was arrested and followed two previous trials when jurors decided the death was a crime, but couldn’t agree if it was murder or manslaughter.
Brown, whose appeared in court in prison orange, said nothing during sentencing. His lawyer filed a notice of appeal.
