SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — A retired homicide detective took the witness stand in federal court Wednesday as one of the defendants in a lawsuit alleging wrongful death of a SDPD crime lab employee.
The employee, Kevin Brown, committed suicide in 2014 after he became a suspect in the 1984 murder of a teenage girl at Torrey Pines State Beach.
Detective Maura Mekenas-Parga testified it was her job to keep a written log of evidence seized from Brown’s home in Chula Vista when officers served a search warrant in January 2014.
“None of us wanted to be there. This was one of our own,” Mekenas-Parga said on the stand.
Questioning focused on items taken from Brown’s home – including thousands of photographs, magazines, diaries, and personal documents – that may have fallen outside the scope of the search warrant.
Mekenas-Parga described her job as that of a “scribe” during the warrant operation.
“It was the case agent’s job to review the photographs. I was just the collector,” she testified.
Officers served the warrant as part of a homicide investigation after Brown’s DNA was found on vaginal swabs from the cold-case murder of Claire Hough, 14, at Torrey Pines.
Brown’s widow, Rebecca Brown, sued for damages alleging the DNA hit was the result of contamination in the SDPD crime lab where Brown worked for 20 years. Earlier testimony revealed that Brown and other workers routinely brought their own semen into the SDPD lab in 1984 to be used as control samples.
Plaintiffs claim another SDPD detective, Michael Lambert, did not mention the possibility of DNA contamination when he obtained the 2014 search warrant for Brown’s home.
The broad seizure of personal items from Brown’s home contributed to his suicide, according to the lawsuit. Rebecca Brown believes the stress of being named a homicide suspect also led to her husband’s suicide by hanging in October 2014.
Brown had a history of “major depression” and anxiety going back to the 1980s, according to court testimony presented Wednesday afternoon by San Diego forensic psychologist Dr. Clark Clipson.
Clipson testified Brown had issues with anger management but no criminal history whatsoever.
Testimony continues Thursday in the federal courtroom of Judge Dana Sabraw. Court will not be in session Friday.
