In shades of the Jill and Kent Easter cases, a Laguna Hills man followed a woman in first pleading not guilty and later copping (in his case, last Wednesday) to planting weapons and methamphetamine inside the bed of a woman’s truck and falsely reporting she was holding to the law.
Specifically, Kevin Brown pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to commit a crime and false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud or deceit as well as misdemeanor false report of emergency and altering evidence with a sentencing enhancement for prior prison for second degree burglary in Los Angeles in 2010.
The 44-year-old Laguna Hills resident could be sentenced as soon as Sept. 14 to four years and eight months in state prison plus a year and six months in county jail.
Brown’s partner in asinine crime, Jennifer Michele Beale, also got a year and four months in county jail after copping to the same felony and misdemeanor counts. (The 38-year-old Laguna Hills resident did not have the prior prison stint like Brown did that brought on the prison stretch.)
On March 23, 2016, these geniuses conspired to plant a replica Sig Sauer BB gun, a 12-inch hunting knife, methamphetamine, a scale, small plastic bags, a note with names and dollar amounts, and a glass pipe in a 40-year-old woman’s truck and then getting the cops after her.
That night, the meth and drug paraphernalia were placed in a sunglasses case and stuck with the rest of the stuff wrapped in a towel and placed in the bed of the woman’s truck that was parked outside her Laguna Niguel home. Just before 6 a.m. the next morning, Beale emailed Orange County Crime Stoppers, the nonprofit that passes anonymous tips to law enforcement, to falsely report that she saw the woman arguing with someone and waving a gun around before placing the weapon in the bed of her truck.
About 11:30 a.m. on March 24, 2016, Beale called 9-1-1 to, again, offer her false report about the gun waving that never happened, and that prompted Orange County sheriff’s deputies to visit the woman’s home, find the items planted in the bed of her truck and then detain her.
However, in the process of being hauled in, the unidentified woman told deputies that she recognized that the sunglasses case belonged to Beale. Further investigation by deputies led to the woman’s release and, eventually, Beale and Brown’s arrests on April 14, 2016.
Authorities have declined to reveal the motive for the pair’s crimes against the poor woman. At least we know in the similar case of those wacky Easters, it was revenge against a PTA mom who the couple (wrongly) thought had dissed their little boy.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.