Cameron John Brown says his 4-year-old daughter accidentally tripped and fell 130 feet to her death three years ago, but law enforcement officials now say the father pushed little Lauren off a cliff on California’s Palos Verdes Peninsula to escape paying $1,000-a-month child-support payments.
According to a Los Angeles Times report, police suspected Brown of killing Lauren Key on Nov. 8, 2000, virtually from the start. But minus any eyewitnesses, investigators had to assemble a strong circumstantial case, relying on expert witnesses to deconstruct Brown’s story. He claimed his daughter got lost while walking alone toward Inspiration Point, then stumbled and fell over one of the highest cliffs on the peninsula.
Paramedics called to the scene couldn’t resuscitate the girl, said the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Sarah Key-Marer, Lauren’s mother, told the LA Times she was “obviously relieved that there’ll be some sort of glimmer of justice, hopefully,” and added, “I miss her so terribly. I cannot understand any of this. It’s tragic. Nothing is going to bring her back.”
Brown, arraigned yesterday in Torrance Superior Court, did not live with the child’s mother, and had no contact with Lauren until she was 3. But when her mother filed for child support, and after DNA testing proved Brown was the father, Brown asked for visitation upon being assessed $1,000 a month in support payments.
Regarding the 4-year-old’s death, Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum told the Times, “Our position is that at least one of his motives [for the alleged murder] was to get rid of child support.”
Brown is currently being held without bail on one count of murder with the special circumstances of financial gain and lying in wait, said Hum, according to the Associated Press. A decision on whether to seek the death penalty has not yet been made, he said.
“Lying in wait” is a legal factor that, if proved, ratchets up the severity of the crime, possibly bringing the death penalty. Revolving around “concealment of purpose,” Hum told the Times, “you don’t have to be hiding. You have to be waiting and watching for an opportune moment to act, to take the other person by surprise.”
Key-Marer, Lauren’s mother, says she didn’t realize the child’s father intended to take her hiking that day, especially alongside 100-foot cliffs, and that her daughter would not have wanted to go. “She was very little girl, prissy, playing with Barbie dolls and all that. She didn’t like bugs or mud,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “Lauren was the love of my life. She was just a beautiful spirit, very friendly, very loving. She loved to go to church. Everyone who met her fell in love with her, and so many people miss her and her spirit.”
