This is the face of a broken woman.
Today, Sarah Key-Marer got the verdict she had waited 15 years for.
She got justice for her baby girl, Lauren Sarene Key, who was just four when her evil father, motivated by a bitter hatred of her mother, hurled the innocent child off a cliff to her death.
Today, a jury convicted Cameron Brown of first-degree murder for killing Lauren because he didn’t want to pay child support for her.
According to one witness, Brown said it would be “nice to get rid of Lauren” so he wouldn’t have to pay the $1,000-a-month child support for the little girl he never wanted.
First-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence without parole, which means Brown will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
After the verdict, an emotionless 53-year-old Brown told a Los Angeles Superior Court judge he didn’t do it: “Judge, I’m innocent, I have no comment.”
Justice was hard to come by for Ms Key-Marer, with two earlier juries being unable to decide whether Brown was a killer or a bad dad who did not do enough to keep his daughter safe when she fell off the cliff.
She cried as the jury delivered their verdict and later told journalists she was in shock.
“All I ever wanted was that he would take responsibility for what happened that day,” she said.
“It’s all been really hard. The pain. We just learned to live with the pain.”
That pain has plagued her since November 2000, when Brown – a former baggage handler – tossed the girl off a 37-metre cliff at Inspiration Point in California’s Rancho Palos Verdes.
Prosecutors said Brown and Ms Key-Marer were locked in a bitter dispute over child support and custody of Lauren.
Jury foreman Greg Apodaca said the verdict following the six-week trial was relatively easy to reach.
Throughout the trial, Brown maintained the little girl tripped as she ran towards the cliff’s edge and accidentally fell to her death.
But experts told the jury that, based on the little girl’s injuries, she could not have run fast enough to clear part of the cliff without striking the protruding rock below.
This jury also heard from a witness that did not give evidence in the two earlier trials.
He bolstered the prosecution case that Brown killed his daughter for financial gain by giving evidence about Brown telling him it would be “nice to get rid of Lauren” so he could stop paying child support.
Brown had even tried to get Ms Key-Marer, a British citizen, deported and had wanted her to get an abortion when she was pregnant with Lauren.
The prosecutors argued that Brown hated his former partner so much he was willing to kill her beloved daughter to get back at her.
And the jury agreed.
Brown will be sentenced on June 19. His lawyers have already indicated they will appeal the verdict.
For more, watch this video:
For more about parents who kill, read these articles:
Father who threw 5-year old daughter off a bridge “a demon”.
He dressed his daughters up, filmed them dancing, and then smothered them.
This mother killed her 4-year-old by forcing her to repeatedly ride a motorbike.
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