Sarah Kim Mar still remembers the morning of November 21, 2009, the last time she held her daughter alive. She dropped four-year-old Lauren Key off at preschool, hugged her tight, and whispered “I love you” as the little girl clung to her, sobbing. The teacher had to pry Lauren from her mother’s arms.
Sarah assured her everything would be fine. It was not fine.
Lauren Key was a typical four-year-old girly girl who loved singing, playing with dolls, and dancing. Her mother described her personality as contagious. “She was very happy,” Sarah said, her voice breaking.
But beneath that radiant smile, something dark was festering. Lauren was the highly coveted centerpiece in a nasty tug-of-war between her mother and father, Cameron Brown.
Cameron Brown was a rugged outdoorsman who liked to ski, surf, and run marathons. He was often seen tooling around ritzy Newport Beach, California in a souped-up army truck. Sarah met him at a jazz bar in Newport Beach.
He was an airport baggage handler, hurling 50-pound pieces of luggage on and off airplanes. Before long, he swept the British rose off her feet, whisking her away on vacations.
But just a few months later, their whirlwind romance came to a crashing stop when Sarah found out she was pregnant. “He chose not to be part of the pregnancy,” she said. “He expressed that he did not want me to keep the baby.”
Brown pressured her to have an abortion, threatened to have her deported, and even tried to get her fired from her job when she refused. When that didn’t work, he cut off all contact.
For the first few years of Lauren’s life, Cameron Brown was completely out of the picture. “He wasn’t part of her life, but that was his choice,” Sarah said. “He never asked to meet her.”
Sarah raised Lauren on her own, but eventually the financial toll overwhelmed the single mom. She filed a petition for child support, and Brown was ordered to pay $1,000 a month, about 40 to 50 percent of his income.
One of Brown’s co-workers at the airport said the absentee dad constantly complained about the hefty payments. That’s when Brown reportedly came up with a devious plan. “He told one of his friends, ‘I heard that in order to get your child support reduced, you have to request visitation, and so that’s what I’m going to do,'” Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum said.
His initial request was for 33 percent custody and joint legal custody. He had never even met Lauren.
Sarah was nervous, but Lauren, now three years old, couldn’t wait to finally spend time with her dad. “I think initially Lauren was excited to meet her father,” Sarah said. The first few visits went okay, supervised by Sarah.
But pretty quickly, friction started to develop. The happy-go-lucky little girl suddenly became troubled and withdrawn. “I would detect anxiety and tantrums that increased as the visits went along,” Sarah said.
“She became very fearful and scared of things that she hadn’t been before.”
Lauren verbalized her fear. “She had said that she did not want to go,” Sarah said. “She would hide under the bed, but the court order said that she had to go, and it broke my heart to have to let her go.”
A few weeks before Thanksgiving, Brown arranged an afternoon visit with Lauren. Sarah dropped her off at preschool, and Lauren immediately started to cry and hold on to her. “The teacher had to come out and pry her from me,” Sarah said.
“I assured her everything would be fine. The last words I said to her was, ‘I love you.’ And the last words she said back to me also were the same.”
Throughout the morning, Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about Lauren. She called the school a couple of times. The teachers told her Lauren was still upset but doing okay.
In fact, Lauren was too upset to eat her favorite lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Sarah was so distraught about the impact this visit was having on Lauren that she decided not to let it happen that day. She headed out to pick Lauren up at school, but it was too late.
Brown was already there.
The teachers reported that Lauren didn’t want to go with her father. She was crying. He had to physically pick her up and carry her out of the preschool.
Brown drove Lauren to Palos Verdes, the seaside town just south of Los Angeles where he lived. He planned a hiking trip with the four-year-old up to a remote cliff in a secluded area called Inspiration Point.
“No parent would take a 4-year-old child out there,” Hum said. They made the nearly one-mile trek to the cliff and ended up sitting on a rocky ledge overlooking the ocean while Lauren tossed rocks into the raging Pacific Ocean below. Brown said he looked away for a split second, and when he turned back, his little girl was gone.
“He just saw her feet as she went over the cliff head first,” Hum said.
The cliff wasn’t just a straight drop into the ocean. There was a slope and projections of rock out from the top. Brown said Lauren ran the entire way to this rocky ledge.
He glanced away for a split second, and when he looked back, all he saw were Lauren’s little feet going over the edge. A terrifying 120-foot drop straight down to the ocean. He said he didn’t see her when he looked over the edge.
What did the father do? He ran down to a beach on the other side of the cliff and borrowed a cell phone to call 911. “My daughter fell off the cliff,” he said calmly.
“Okay, sir. Are you near her? Can you see her from where you are?”
the operator asked. “I don’t know. I haven’t gone down and found her.
I just found somebody with a phone. I called you first. I’m going to look,” Brown replied.
Rather than going to her body or trying to rescue her, he spent about four and a half minutes talking to the 911 operator.
There was no panic, no heartbreak in his voice. As one witness described it, it was like he was ordering a pizza. “There was no emotion, and all the while his daughter is floating face down in the ocean, and he’s chatting on a cell phone and joking with the people at the beach,” Hum said.
Brown eventually made his way down the shoreline in search of little Lauren. It had been nearly 15 minutes since she slipped and fell. He spotted her lifeless body floating face down in the water.
“Her little beautiful body was broken and battered, and it wasn’t anything that any parent should ever have to see or any parent would ever in their worst nightmare ever see,” Sarah said. The initial investigation came in as an accident. But Los Angeles County homicide detectives Danny Smith and Jeffrey Lesley didn’t usually respond to accidents.
Something about Brown’s 911 call and the location of Lauren’s fall was troubling.
“There’s no way that a kid should be out on that cliff,” Detective Lesley said. “I’ve been out on that cliff.” On a hunch, the detectives headed to Inspiration Point to speak to Cameron Brown.
“I went to introduce myself to Mr. Brown, and I remember coming back to Danny and saying, ‘I don’t like this. I don’t like it,'” Lesley said.
“He was so disconnected. It just didn’t feel right.”
Detective Smith looked over at Brown and said, “That’s the dad.” Someone said, “Yeah, that’s him.” Smith was struck by the absolute poker face, lack of emotion, and very nonchalant demeanor.
“Was he upset? Was he distraught his child is dead? No, he was more concerned about his surfboard on top of his car,” Smith said.
An hour away from Inspiration Point, Sarah Kim and her new husband were worried their little Lauren was late coming home. “We decided to drive up to where her father lived, and we were on the phone to the police trying to find out if there was any accidents, and we were directed to go to the nearest police station,” Sarah said. When they got there, they were met by a detective.
“It was all quite a blur to me. They mentioned the word cliff and there had been a death and involved Lauren, but I couldn’t piece everything together. I remember becoming hysterical.
I was just cascaded into this emotional pain. I just remember wailing, heaving. No words were coming out.”
As the police described it, Sarah’s reaction and the father’s reaction could not have been more different. “I feel my reaction was what any parent how they would react if they just heard the worst news of their life,” Sarah said. But Cameron Brown’s behavior was getting more bizarre by the minute.
He showed no interest in what had happened. Instead, he wanted to know who had won the presidential election.
Maybe Brown was just in shock. But there was something the detectives, who were both fathers to kids Lauren’s age, couldn’t explain away. Why would a father take his four-year-old to such a dangerous place?
“When you saw the cliff, what did you think?” a reporter asked. “Interestingly, Jeff and I are both afraid of heights.
He would only go so far, and I’d only go a little bit further. And we were still at least 30 feet from where Cameron said that he took his daughter and sat on the edge of this cliff,” Smith said.
“So, you as a dad, you look at this and you’re saying, ‘There’s no way my four-year-old’s going to walk this willingly.’ No,” Smith said. They called their Special Enforcement Bureau and said they needed people up there with rigged up repelling gear.
“So, wait a minute. You needed a team with repelling gear to get to where he says you they were sitting. Yes.
Because you couldn’t walk out there. We wouldn’t walk out there,” Smith said.
Perspective is everything. Cameron parked on the other side of that point. Then he walked up to the point, went around this entire horseshoe, and came up to this cliff with a four-year-old who he said was leading the way.
“By this point, what are you suspecting?” a reporter asked. “I honestly didn’t know.
I’m just thinking it doesn’t make sense,” Smith said. “Did you believe Cameron’s version of what happened on that cliff? It was very difficult to comprehend what he was saying is what happened.
It was just such a bizarre death.”
When the detectives finally got a glimpse at little Lauren’s body, it was like a punch in the stomach. “She didn’t have the injuries to support a slip and a fall. She would have had scrape marks on her hands, on her arms, on her face, and she showed none of those injuries,” Smith said.
“So, what happened to little Lauren on that cliff? She had to be propelled.”
Cameron Brown said his sweet little daughter Lauren slipped from this cliff and accidentally fell to her death. But Detective Jeff Lesley just couldn’t let it go. There were certain things that he said it just couldn’t have happened that way.
His partner, Detective Danny Smith, was equally suspicious. “Cameron was just a very odd guy. But odd doesn’t make you a killer.
It does not make you a killer. But we just really didn’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling about the guy either,” Smith said.
Neither did the DA, who believed Cameron Brown murdered his innocent four-year-old daughter in the cruelest way imaginable. “You think he just pushed her? Do you think he dropped her based on the nature of her injuries and based on the force with which she would have had to have been thrown had it even sunk in what had happened?”
a reporter asked. “That she died at the hands of her own father was incomprehensible,” Hum said. No one, especially Lauren’s mom, Sarah, wanted to believe a dad would or could throw his own child to her death, but the evidence seemed to be overwhelming.
The forensic evidence was damning. “They examined the edge of the cliff. They examined the dirt, the brush, the weeds.
And there was just no scuff marks. There was no evidence of slipping or sliding or any disturbance along the edge,” Hum said. The county coroner agreed, releasing a disturbing 32-page report ruling Lauren’s death a homicide.
“What were the injuries on her body that indicated to you that this was not an accident?” a reporter asked. “If Lauren had accidentally fallen and slipped, she would show significant sliding injuries, significant abrasions because the cliff wasn’t just a straight drop into the ocean.
She showed none of those injuries, just one sudden impact, which was consistent with her being thrown clear of the edge of the cliff and landing on a single projection about 100 feet down before bouncing off the cliff and then going into the water,” Hum said.
But detectives Jeff Lesley and Danny Smith wanted to prove their theory beyond a reasonable doubt. So they brought in a team of experts in biomechanics to reenact the incident. They filled a box with 40 pounds of weights, about what four-year-old Lauren weighed at the time of her death, and went back to Inspiration Point.
They hurled the box about 10 feet, the distance they estimated Cameron Brown could toss his 40-pound daughter. Remember, he was an airport baggage handler who tossed 50-pound suitcases for a living.
The results were chilling. “How do you suggest he threw her?” a reporter asked.
“The defendant actually placed one hand near the top of Lauren’s back and literally threw her off of the cliff so that she cleared the edge of the cliff, rotated from a head up to head down position, and struck the rock face first with her back away from the cliff and her face into the cliff,” Hum said.
The big question still needing an answer was motive. Why would a dad ππΎππ his own flesh and blood? “The defendant and Lauren’s mother, Sarah Kimar, didn’t get along at all.
Their child custody battle was very contentious,” Hum said. And cops say that’s one of the saddest parts of this story. Brown killed his own daughter just so he wouldn’t have to pay a few hundred bucks a week in child support.
“Can you imagine that would be the reason? No,” Smith said.
As detectives were putting the final pieces of the puzzle together, they kept a close eye on Cameron Brown. “I think Jeff and I both were like, ‘This is kind of that mentality of a guy, like a uni bomber,'” Smith said. Like Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Brown had lived off the grid in a remote cabin in Colorado.
Detectives knew if Brown ran, they may never find him. So they put a surveillance team on him, and lo and behold, their detective intuition was right.
“It was either the day before Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving day, and our surveillance team called me and said, ‘I think this guy’s going to get on and he’s going to take off,'” Smith said. “And I said, ‘Are me.’ That was that he went to jail.”
Based on the box test and the autopsy on little Lauren, Brown was charged with first-degree murder and lying in weight.
Everybody thought the case would be a slam dunk. “There’s not anyone in my opinion who is reasonable that would take his story and say, ‘Yeah, I could see that happening,'” Hum said. But jurors were skeptical.
“Jurors just don’t want to believe that a man would murder his daughter, period, and certainly not by throwing her off of a cliff into the ocean,” Hum said.
Cameron Brown may be the most hated father in the country. Accused of throwing his four-year-old little girl Lauren off the side of a cliff just so he wouldn’t have to pay a few hundred bucks a week in child support. “You know, the innocence of a victim makes the crime that much more hideous,” Hum said.
And possibly the most sickening part, after Brown murdered his daughter, detectives say he went back and ate his daughter’s leftover peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of her lunchbox. “I mean, to me, it put you in the category of sociopath,” Smith said.
Brown maintained the only thing he is guilty of is not being able to save Lauren when she accidentally fell. “The defendant story is a lie,” Hum said. But who would the jury side with?
The verdict came in, and the prosecution was floored. The jury was deadlocked.
“What happened in the first trial that caused a hung jury?” a reporter asked. “There were a couple of reasons.
The jurors had trouble convicting the defendant of murder when there were no eyewitnesses to say, ‘I saw him throw her over the cliff.’ But I think the bigger problem with the case was just the unwillingness of some jurors to believe that a man would do this to his daughter and in such a horrible way,” Hum said.
“I just couldn’t make sense of it. It was a huge disappointment at the time,” Sarah said. “What do you say to Sarah?”
a reporter asked. “I think I just said we weren’t done. We’re not done, and we’ll keep fighting until we are done,” Hum said.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Jeff Lesley wasn’t about to give up. He and his partner, Detective Danny Smith, were determined to get justice for little Lauren. “We kept working on Lauren’s case, and we never gave up on it,” Lesley said.
And prosecutors say the dogged detectives’ tireless work on the case landed a new lead. “Even after the first trial, he located additional witnesses who proved to be significant witnesses as well,” Hum said.
Nearly three years later, the district attorney decided to try Brown’s case again. It was a completely different jury, but the outcome was shockingly the same. “It’s like, where is this jury pool?
I mean, what are they thinking? And it just I couldn’t believe it,” Sarah said. “I really wanted to have that closure in my life, but it obviously wasn’t the time that was going to happen, so I just had to wait.”
“Did you think that there would be a third trial?” a reporter asked. “I don’t think any of us were sure of that,” Hum said.
Detective Danny Smith decided to hang up his badge and retire. But desperate to find justice for little Lauren, Detective Lesley went back to the DA and asked, “What will it take to get a guilty verdict?” They said, “You need more.
We need more.” “Wow. So, we just kept banging away at it,” Lesley said.
He knew that if there was anything else out there, if there was any other information he could get, he was going to go out there and dig again. And there in one of the dozens of binders Detective Lesley had filled with notes, he spotted a name. It was a baggage handler who worked with Brown, and he was never interviewed.
“He was able to locate a witness who recalled back shortly before Lauren was murdered how the defendant would complain about the child support payments,” Hum said. “I think the comment was something to the effect of, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just ππΎππ him and get rid of him?'”
With that witness, they headed back to trial for a third time. But would that one witness be enough to tip the jury? “As you’re there for the third trial, and the jury goes out, what’s going through your head?”
a reporter asked. “Obviously, I hoped for justice and wanted us to win,” Sarah said. “You must have been really nervous.
Everyone was on edge,” the reporter said.
This time it took the jury just over 36 hours to reach a verdict. “And what’s the verdict?” a reporter asked.
“The jury in the above entitled action to find a defendant Cameron Brown guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree. Guilty on all counts,” the court said. Even jury members rejoiced for all the pain she has been going through.
“I’m sorry for your death of your baby, but justice has finally been served,” a juror said.
“Could you believe it? No. After three tries, you finally got guilty.
We finally got it guilty,” Lesley said. “I think that I heard Sarah sobbing in the audience. I looked at the detective who was sitting next to me.
And there was just an overwhelming sense of relief that justice had finally been done,” Hum said.
The prosecutor said that when it came to sentencing, he became visibly emotional. “Yeah. In court, what was going on?”
a reporter asked. “I think it finally set in. Sorry.
I guess it still does. I remember when I turned over my shoulder and looked directly at Sarah, who’s sitting here right now. We just kind of made eye contact like we did it and we’re done,” Hum said.
It was a long, emotional 15-year fight for justice for Lauren. “Yeah, I told you that we weren’t going to give up. I think I told you that from the beginning,” Lesley said.
“I believed you. I believed you,” Sarah said.
And just when he thought he could rest, Detective Lesley found himself in another battle. This one for his life against an aggressive form of blood cancer. “And how are you doing?”
a reporter asked. “I’m doing okay. I have good days and bad days.
Been through a lot of treatment. A lot of chemotherapy. Had a bone marrow transplant.
My son was my donor, and I think I was on my deathbed a couple of times,” Lesley said.
“He’s probably the toughest guy mentally and physically I’ve ever known in my life. There’s no quit in him. Lauren’s case shows you that.
Yeah, there’s no quit there. He’s not going to give into this thing,” Smith said. “I would like to thank Detective Lesley from the bottom of my heart for his loyalty, his hard work, and dedication because without this, there would be no justice for Lauren,” Sarah said.
Cameron Brown is now serving life in prison without the possibility of parole. The man who threw his daughter off a cliff to avoid paying child support will never see freedom again. But for Sarah Kim Mar, the pain of losing her precious little girl will never fade.
She visits Lauren’s grave every week, bringing her favorite dolls and singing her favorite songs. The four-year-old who loved singing, playing with dolls, and dancing is gone, but her memory lives on in the hearts of those who fought for her justice.